James Hillman | Jungian therapist, 85

James Hillman, 85, a therapist and best-selling author whose theories about the psyche helped revive interest in the ideas of Carl Jung and animate the men's movement in the 1990s, died Thursday of bone cancer at his home in Thompson, Conn.

Part scholar, part mystic, and part performance artist in his popular lectures, Mr. Hillman began making waves during his studies at the C.G. Jung Institute in Zurich in 1959. He followed his mentor's lead in taking aim at the assumptions behind standard psychotherapies, including Freudian analysis, arguing that the best clues for understanding the human mind lay in myth and imagination, not in standard psychological or medical concepts.

His 1964 book, Suicide and the Soul, challenged therapists to view thoughts of death not as symptoms to be cured but as philosophical longings to be explored and understood.

By the time he returned to the United States in 1970s, he had adapted Jungian ideas into a model he called archetypal psychology, rooted in the aesthetic imagination. The actress Helen Hunt, the composer Meredith Monk, and John Densmore, the drummer for the Doors, were among his adherents.

In the late 1980s, he and two friends, the poet Robert Bly and the writer and storyteller Michael J. Meade, began leading conferences exploring male archetypes in myths, fairy tales and poems. The gatherings struck a chord, particularly with middle-age men - and Bly's book Iron John became a best-seller.

By the early 1990s, there were thousands of such men's workshops and retreats across the country, many complete with drumming, sweat lodges, and shout-outs to the ancient ancestors.

- New York Times News Service