Circling the Drain: George Carlin and James Hillman on Culture and Language
Excerpt-Brian Falk
One might ask the very reasonable question—What the hell is the comedian George Carlin and psychologist James Hillman doing in a book together? I mean, it is kind of crazy. But if you’re familiar with both, I think you already can feel how these two men took a stand as the outsider in their own way.
During my years studying for my masters in Counseling Psychology at Pacifica Graduate Institute between 2001and 2004, I encountered the great mind of James Hillman. When I read Re-Visioning Psychology, I knew I was in the presence of a mind that was an advocate for never resting easily with the status quo. This kind of mind was familiar to me, as my father is George Carlin.
During a weekend in the spring of 2016 I attended a conference at Pacific Graduate Institute that celebrated the life and work of James Hillman. Up until then, Hillman’s ideas were still elusive to me. I could never quite step into the space he was inviting me into. But listening to the many presentations, and being in conversation with Hillman’s loved ones, peers and students, I suddenly saw and felt the huge parallels between the minds of Hillman and my father. I saw not just their ideas, but also the courageous stance to step out of the mainstream in order to comment and invite others into a new way of seeing.
Suddenly the writer and thinker in me was grabbed by the urge to survey all the ways these men stood outside the conventional and pointed a clear way to an independent, autonomous way of being in our culture…
From the Foreword by Kelly Carlin