An Ecology of Imagination as Imagination of Ecology. The Visionary Legacy of James Hillman's Introverted Universe

Lecture: An Ecology of Imagination as Imagination of Ecology. The Visionary Legacy of James Hillman's Introverted Universe

Lecturer: Stefano Carta (University of Cagliari)

Date: Friday, February 13, 2026, 6:30 p.m.

Place: Monte Verità (Ascona), Auditorium and Zoom: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82299950382

Cycle: Eranos-Jung Lectures 20265 - Guided by the Daimon. James Hillman's (1926-2011) Legacy on the Hundredth Anniversary of his Birth

Language: Italian

Moderator: Fabio Merlini (Eranos Foundation, Ascona / SUFFP, Lugano)

Followed by discussion with the audience and aperitif

The video recording of the conference will be viewable on the official YouTube channel of the Eranos Foundation.

Lecture Presentation

Following some of James Hillman’s biographical steps, some features of his thoughts will be discussed. His position will be interpreted as consonant with our, and his, contemporary historical and cultural milieu, which makes him a sort of a post-modern thinker. Yet, this aspect represents, in Hillman’s thinking (in a way like Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari), a criticism of some foundations of modernity – a deconstruction of a deconstruction. In fact, mostly through his poetic and literary rhetoric, which reminds of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Richard Rorty’s “linguistic turn”, Hillman transforms the post-modern disaggregation and atomization into a new-ancient form of polytheistic religiosity, and the issue of meaning as a form of linguistic conventional game into a language that becomes imagination and, through this religio, recuperates its lost ontological enchantment and its fullness. These features make of Hillman an extraordinary, unique introverted “ecological” thinker, in which the multiplicity of the world is reconnected by the Anima from within.

Lecturer' Bio-bibliography

Stefano Carta is Professor of Dynamic Psychology at the University of Cagliari, Analyst of the Associazione Italiana di Psicologia Analitica (AIPA), where he has also held the position of President since 2002, and Fellow of the International Association for Analytical Psychology (IAAP). Visiting Professor at the University of Essex in the United Kingdom, he has been Director of the journal Studi junghiani since 2002 and, since 2020, Director of Rivista di Psicologia Analitica: the oldest Jungian publication in Italy. From 1998 to 2004, he was Italy's representative in the International Union of Psychological Sciences (IUPsyS). Organizer of several conferences on activism and political and social engagement from the perspective of Analytical Psychology, he founded the non-profit organization “Progetto ETNa – Etnopsicologia analitica” (Analytical Ethnopsychology Project), aimed at training and clinical intervention in the field of ethnopsychiatry, whose activities for migrants and refugees continue today. As Honorary Theme Editor, he edited the entry “Psychology” for UNESCO's Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems. Among his publications, we mention the two-volume work, The Infinite Ladder, published in 2025 by Routledge: Biology to Psychology in Jungian and Evolutionary Theory and A Jungian and Evolutionary Approach to Psychology and Culture. In this innovative work, Stefano Carta repositioned Jung's legacy and the field of Analytical Psychology within the contemporary landscape of knowledge in neurobiology, psychology, culture, and anthropology.

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In 2026, the Eranos Foundation intends to honor a figure who has brought prestige to the history of its meetings. This figure is the American psychologist James Hillman (1926-2011), whose 100th birthday is being celebrated this year. A highly regarded speaker at the famous Eranos Tagungen on several occasions, his innovative and courageous thinking contributed to the cultural renewal of analytical psychology, developing Jung's intuition of archetypes in unexpected directions and decisively returning the psyche to its imaginal role—more than a terrain to be interpreted, a horizon to be recognized and inhabited. This year, as we did last year with Carl Gustav Jung on the 150th anniversary of his birth, we do not intend to study Hillman analytically, but rather to be inspired by some of his most disruptive perspectives, allowing them to interact with the issues that concern us most today. The result will therefore be a very free and open dialogue with relevant aspects of his thinking, with the aim of shedding light on the current situation. Each speaker will thus be inspired as they see fit by a style of thinking that has taken psychology beyond the strictly clinical dimension, making it a heuristic tool for better understanding society and individuals. This is the lesson we will try to take advantage of.