Archetypal psychology has lacked an exploration of war and its deeper dimensions. This clearly written book not only fills the breach, it invites the reader to look into the heart of war: into the destruction, the religious fascination, and even the love that permeate warfare. Topics under discussion include the media role in aggression; accounts spoken and written by soldiers under fire; the mythic structures behind the American fascination with guns; and what psychology and philosophy have had to say about one of the oldest human pastimes--all in sparkling prose and flavored with anecdotes and examples.To Christian readers I would recommend considering Hillmans view that Christianity has been martial from the start as a challenge to examine the relationship between the Christian emphasis on love and innocence and its long institutional history of intolerance and brutality. Is warfare endemic to Christianity? Are Christians who reject warfare exceptions to an almost universal aggressiveness? Must Christianity be a religion of missionaries who think they know better than the peoples they seek to convert? These are some of the questions raised by Hillmans study.
Hillman also brings new emphasis to a heavily underrated factor in American aggression: hypocrisy. How is it that we select as leaders (and do adults really need leaders to begin with? Indigenous cultures got on fine with wise elders and mentors) the most insincere and immature among us? Why is it (as Aaron Kipnis puts it) an old boys club instead of a gathering of wise old men? What does it do to us, these deceptive speeches and these Orwellian justifications (war for peace; "democracy" from the top down; "pre-emptions" that precede nothing but endless cycles of violence)? And from the therapists point of view: how does living in a nation addicted to unending warfare and cheap, finger-pointing patriotism impact the work we do with our clients?
Hillmans archetypalizing of warfare by bringing it home to the altar of Mars is an elegant move, but for me it always raises the concern: are we eternalizing something that ought to be analyzed as a cultural institution? In a book Im preparing for publication (The Tears of Llorona; look for it here at Amazon.com around late July or early August 2004) I cite recent research by archeologist R. Brian Ferguson that the evidence for organized warfare only goes back as far as organized civilization. Hillman is correct to dwell on the archetypal aspects--a "tawil" move of bringing something back to its ultimate foundations--and while he never makes this a "war is inevitable" justification for armed aggression, Im wondering if the social-economic-cultural aspect, which hes clearly aware of, needs more mention.
In a recent discussion at the Pacifica Graduate Institute, Hillman told me about how it was to visit the Civil War battlefields he mentions in his book. I was moved to see how deeply he felt about what for him is not a merely academic or intellectual interest. "The blood of our brothers cries out from the land," he said, and although he agreed with my phrasing it as "the return of the historically repressed," he did the subject much dearer justice by cohering so closely to the experience as it struck him.
