Dick Russell can take you into someone’s world. He has taken us into Hillman’s world in the ‘Life and Ideas of James Hillman’. And in ‘My Mysterious Son’ he takes us into his world and the journey with his son Franklin who was diagnosed with schizophrenia at seventeen. It is a big journey, and it is a beautiful and intimate story. For years Franklin spent time in and out of various hospitals. Dick was invited with his son, out of the blue, to witness the annual wildlife migration on Africa’s Serengeti Plain, ultimately the two-week trip changed both of their lives. Amongst other things we discuss the medical model, the ‘'normal’' world, Hillman’s advice, Malidoma Somé, how he began to discover Franklin’s gifts, shamanism, and what became for both of them an ancestral quest.
Dick Russell has published fifteen books. His latest is The Real RFK Jr: Trials of a Truth Warrior, an intimate biography of the son of Robert Kennedy and who is running for president in the 2024 election. The third volume of Russell’s monumental biography, The Life and Ideas of James Hillman, is scheduled to appear in 2023. The first volume, “The Making of a Psychologist,” was published in 2013 and chronicled the early years of the pioneering founder of archetypal psychology.
My Mysterious Son with Dick Russell