An important ah moment happened in my reading of James Hillman's Re-Visioning Psychology (Harper Colophon, 1977) and it concerns the notion of 'making soul'. Being a post-Jungian it is perhaps not surprising that Hillman should put a value on soul, however his idea of soul being made by the inculcation of culture, or by another name, the liberal arts, can claim some originality. The art and science of fiction, history, biography, poetry or philosophy is the raw material for making soul. Hillman does nod to the Romantics as a precursor of his thesis. Soul here has no religious or metaphysical connection. I will particularly cite history in this respect. Reading history helps us explain the past, but it also is very important in making soul. What would the Western soul be without the narratives of Salamis, Athens versus Sparta, King Alfred, 1066, the Crusades or the Somme? Where would national soul be without the stories of Trafalgar, Henry VIII, Louis Quatorze, Gallipoli? In the making of soul it does not matter if the events are absorbed with misunderstandings or falsehoods or even shameful aspects; they all go into the soul making process. Neither is it reprehensible if the acting out of these soul-myths is irrational, offensive to some or even slightly absurd. This process might be better understood in the higher educational establishments which are so focussed upon reason and scholarship that they forget that it is the entire man which is being engaged in the educative process. The educative business of scholarship can go on alongside a more sympathetic treatment of soul making and its place in the full life.
