Senex & Puer

Edited by Glen Slater, Senex & Puer, Vol. 3 of the Uniform Edition of the Writings of James Hillman, for the first time, collects Hillman’s running encounters with a primary psychological pattern-an archetype that arises alongside the very attempt to fashion psychological perspective. Senex and puer are Latin terms for old man and youth, and personify the poles of tradition, stasis, structure, and authority on one side, and immediacy, wandering, invention and idealism on the other. The senex consolidates, grounds, and disciplines; the puer flashes with insight and thrives on fantasy and creativity. These diverging, conflicting tendencies are ultimately interdependent, forming two faces of the one configuration, each face never far from the other. Old and new maybe the most direct terms for the pair. They represent two very different ways of entering the world, but are oddly dependent on one another.