James Hillman has said that psychopathology today is not just a problem of interior states, but rather that psyche lives inside and out: Outside in the depressed buildings, the manic depressive commute, the schizophrenia of everyday life. Psycho-pathologies show up not only in mind, but on the television, radio and cinema, in program, format and genre, in the characters and personalities who bring us entertainment--be it fact or fiction.
In the lecture below, I want to pose a question to my students. They are currently weaving their way through Freud and Jung and on their way to Lacan; their focus is media studies, and Hillman notes, time and again, that the psyche, ill or healthy (for buildings can be grand, driving a pleasure, and everyday life a joy) lives in both the form and the content of texts. So whether we are interested in mass mediation, micromediation, or, for that matter, interpersonal mediation, we need to know mythologies we live.
In fact, we started this class studying semiotics, and in a common way, we started in the middle of a course. Because semiotics seeks to uncover myths, but what myths can you uncover if you don't know the myths we live? Life is often like that.... Isn't it?
Watch Hillman, who many consider Jung and Campbell's heir apparent, speak about the gods. My question is this: What does he mean when he mentions the politicians and the journalists? What recognition is it that brings the audience to applause? To answer this question you really need watch only part one, but parts two and three are equally engaging (Of course, some of you will find this totally boring. If that's the case, hang in there. One day you will be a journalist, or politician, or, in some way The Media itself: It's good to know what power you truly have).
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