Abstract

This chapter examines the mystical and erotic in Hillman’s early thought through the influence of the ancient Greek god Dionysus. With a focus on the embodied, emotional, and erotic nature of Dionysus, I will show how these qualities came to formulate the core theoretical vision of Hillman’s archetypal hermeneutic and served as a critique of traditional psychological epistemologies, as well as of normative scholarly approaches in both the humanities and sciences. In “saving” image, symbol, and even the “mystical,” from an analytic, disembodied, and misogynist reductionism, Hillman’s archetypal psychology champions a form of transformational subjectivity, and personally redemptive mysticism, through an ontological affirmation of what Jung understood as the reality of the psyche.