Mythic Figures: 2017 James Hillman Symposium
The Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture
In Mythic Figures, volume 6.1 of the Uniform Edition, James Hillman asks, “What is the truth of myth?” and then answers himself: “This question is particularly important since the modern, secular notion of myth usually means falsehood and fantasy, anything but the truth.” The volume is concerned with psychopathology and myth. As Jung famously said, “the gods have become our diseases.” Hillman points out the psychopathology of each type of human behavior that is manifested in different spheres connected to the gods and myth; he will discuss the virtues but then call to your attention the underside. Speakers "sounded the speech of a particular mythic figure, one that [Hillman] had written about in the volume . . . and spoke resonances of mythic moments re-sounding in our time" [Robert Sardello, Preface, Conversing with James Hillman: Mythic Figures, forthcoming 2018].
Dennis Patrick Slattery - Oedipus Revised, James Hillman Revisited: Mimesis, Memory and the Shaping of a Personal Myth.
Dennis Patrick Slattery, Ph.D., has for the past twenty-three years been a Core Faculty member in the Mythological Studies Program at Pacifica Graduate Institute in Carpinteria, CA. He has taught for the past forty-five years at the elementary, secondary, undergraduate, and graduate levels. From 1984-87, he taught teachers the classics of literature in the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture’s Summer Program for Teachers. He also taught for six years at the Fairhope Institute of Humanites and Culture’s Summer Program for high school teachers under the direction of Dr. Larry Allums, current director of the Dallas Institute. He is the author, co-author, editor, or co-editor of twenty-five volumes as well as over two hundred articles in books, magazines, newspapers and online journals. His titles include: The Idiot: Dostoevsky’s Fantastic Prince (1984); The Wounded Body: Remembering the Markings of Flesh (2000); Grace in the Desert: Awakening to the Gifts of Monastic Life (2003); Harvesting Darkness: Essays on Literature, Myth, Film and Culture (2006); with Glen Slater he coedited Varieties of Mythic Experience: Essays on Religion, Psyche and Culture (2008); with Jennifer Selig he co-edited Reimagining Education: Essays on Reviving the Soul of Learning (2009); Day-to-Day Dante: Exploring Personal Myth Through The Divine Comedy (2012); Creases in Culture: Essays Toward a Poetics of Depth; and Our Daily Breach: Exploring Your Personal Myth Through Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick. He has also published six volumes of poetry and one novel. He offers (W)riting Retreats on personal mythology using the writings of Joseph Campbell and others to Jungian groups and organizations in the United States and Europe. Currently he is co-editing with Evans Lansing Smith a volume on the letters of Joseph Campbell as well as recently publishing a revised and expanded edition of Grace in the Desert with Angelico Press: A Pilgrimage Beyond Belief: Spiritual Journeys through Christian and Buddhist Monasteries of the American West (July 2017).
