The Soul's Code - Discerning Our Calling in the Age of Psychology
I was stunned by Hillman’s iconoclastic shredding of Western psychology’s fundamental theories and practices. Perhaps this chapter resonated deeply with me because as a 10 year old boy I was tested and evaluated according to these constructs by educators who were looking to diagnose the root of certain behaviors that today would be considered hyperactive disorder. Were I a psychology major it is possible I would have wept in grief as my gods, Freud, Jung and Adler were condemned to the gallows reserved for those who have committed the most egregious crimes against humanity.
My disruptive behaviors, which I will later describe, may be attributable to Hillman’s assertion that a ‘calling’ may appear in the “myriad symptoms of difficult, self-destructive, accident prone “hyper� children.�(p. 13). The objective of this piece is to get us to “…see disturbances in children less as developmental problems than as revelatory emblems. (p.33). These emblems are therefore interpretable as indicators of someone’s calling as opposed to a collection of symptoms requiring diagnosis and therapy
Hillman’s acorn theory, “each person bears a uniqueness that asks to be lived and that is already present before it can be lived.� is based on Plato’s mythic idea that each person enters the world called to a fruition of what their soul is meant to accomplish in life. (p. 6). We are born with a ‘daimon’(p. 8), defined by the Oxford Dictionary as “an inner or attendant spirit or inspiring force�. This “soul image� (p. 10), or “innate image� (p. 4), or calling; these plots of our personal stories, are undetectable through the frames of contemporary psychology.
The myth admonishes us to watch children carefully to catch glimpses of their calling in action, to understand its intentions and not block the way. Examples of childhood indicators of powerful callings show us clear evidence that forces may be at work in our development that cannot be explained by our genetic or social heritage. Hillman also challenges us to learn innovative ways to see behaviors as manifestations of emergent callings instead of disruptive symptoms of psychological disorder. The exceptional and extraordinary are often labeled abnormal and pathological in the expert system of psychology. “So long as statistics of normalizing developmental psychology determine the standards against which the extraordinary complexities of life are judged, deviations become deviants.� (p. 30)
The genius (another word for calling) of the great American artist Jackson Pollock is reduced by a psychologist to nothing more than over compensation for a childhood fear of urinating out doors with his older brothers. This compensation theory denies the authentic calling that the artist manifests in his work. (P. 25) Hillman asserts that psychology seeks to reduce our personalities to constructs based on our memories of childhood trauma. (P. 4).
Hillman parades the childhood frailties of leader after leader before us: Ghandi, Franco, Eleanor Roosevelt, Rommel, showing how psychology interprets their rise to superiority of leadership as compensation for the inferiorities they suffered in their early years. Hillman rails against this form of degradation, and admonishes us not become victims of our childhood traumas. Instead, he asserts leadership in the extraordinary lives he describes arises from a vision or an ideal that calls. It is each one of our unique visions or calls to leadership that we must personally discern if we are to lead a satisfying and fulfilled life and become good leaders in our own right.
Crosby and Bryson ask us to become clear about the “public passion that summons you to leadership� (LCG P. 52) and to reflect on Robert Terry’s ethical categories from his book Authentic Leadership. They call this process “soul-work� which may be likened to discerning the “soul image� or “innate image� in Hillman. They provide us tools to mine the depths of our personal calling, to get acquainted with our personal daimon. Through these processes we can recover our sense of self-determination, shedding the trauma infused interpretations of our past and replace them with our authentic voice.
A sense of fate infuses my calling to a public life and leadership. I’ve had glimpses of my daimon over the years, and have been fortunate to arrive at this moment with the capacity to finally give it full credence. Even my inappropriate behavior in 4th grade was a manifestation of this calling to fight for the oppressed and the common good. In this case I was the oppressed, the object of jokes and insults to my last name during unsupervised time in the classroom. Taking action to obtain a cessation of these undiplomatic behaviors, I escalated by grabbing the offender’s pipe cleaner orchestra project and running around the room threatening to destroy it if he did not cease his taunts. At that moment the teacher walked in, the name caller ratted me out, there was no due process and I was banished to the library during the post lunch period unsupervised time. The sense of injustice I felt was infuriating. I wanted to point out that I could have simply smashed the project, but I had no chance to give my side of the incident.
After a couple of days, another miscreant from a different class was stowed away with me. We started out in quiet obedience, but the temptations were too great, and we began to manufacture and throw paper airplanes around the room. We were caught, and it was at this point that they approached my parents for permission to administer a battery of psychological tests to determine why I was “misbehaving�. Fortunately this was before the common practice of administering Ritalin to ‘hyperactive’ kids became commonplace.
Hillman rightfully fears that we are crippling generations of children with drugs and therapy instead of learning how to properly interpret and nurture the manifestations of their calling. Therapy and drugs disconnect children from their calling, making them the powerless clients of the pharmaceutical and psychotherapy industries. Leaders also have the power to disconnect their employees from their calling and equally to enable employees to answer their calling. Kouznes and Posner have learned that when workers feel powerless and controlled by others they will show no commitment to excel. When workers feel powerful they have a deep sense of being in control of their own lives, and have an increased chance of success. (K & P 251-254) Leaders who allow their constituencies to connect to their own calling will see benefits to their organizations, municipalities, states and countries.