Coldness in the depth-psychology corpus is no mere meteorological metaphor: it constitutes a genuine psychic register, alternately pathological and epistemologically necessary. Hillman is the most sustained theorist of coldness as a legitimate soul-state, arguing in both ‘The Dream and the Underworld’ and ‘A Blue Fire’ that the therapeutic compulsion to warm what is cold — to melt the ice maiden, to thaw the frozen — represents a failure of psychological courage rather than a virtue. Drawing on Dante’s Ninth Circle and on the refrigerium tradition of early Christian soul-language, Hillman insists that the nekyia into Hell’s ice demands its own homeopathic coldness, a ‘cold psychological eye’ that sees from below. Von Franz, by contrast, reads coldness as the inhuman register of the troll-world — the weird, estranged coldness of the unconscious psyche frozen away from human warmth. Jung’s Aion anchors coldness theologically in the north wind and the frigidity of sinners. Greene’s Saturn traces the social enactment of coldness as projected Saturn-fear, where perceived rejection and criticism mask the terror of one’s own inadequacy. Across these texts a central tension persists: is coldness a pathological contraction to be dissolved, or an archetypal depth-condition that must be inhabited on its own terms before any genuine psychological penetration becomes possible?
The nekyia into Hell’s ice requires coldness. If any connection is to be made, we must be able to work with the cruel extremities of ice itself.
Hillman argues that psychological encounter with the Ninth Circle’s infernal depths demands that the therapist cultivate genuine coldness rather than oppose it with warmth.
, The Dream and the Underworld, 1979thesis
polar coldness is also a place one can be. Therefore the urge to warm the cold and melt the ice (oppositionalism again) reflects a therapeutic effort that has not been able to meet the ice at its own level.
Hillman establishes coldness as a legitimate psychic geography, arguing that the therapeutic drive to dissolve it is itself a symptom of unresolved fear of the depths.
, A Blue Fire: The Essential James Hillman, 1989thesis
The color white is also associated with snow, with the negative aspect of coldness, with the weird inhuman coldness of the unconscious psyche. I would therefore assume that the troll is a secret power that has frozen up, so to speak, estranged from all human warmth.
Von Franz identifies coldness with the inhuman, frozen dimension of the unconscious, embodied in the troll figure as a power estranged from relatedness.
, Archetypal Patterns in Fairy Tales, 1997thesis
The Victorine monk Garnerius says that the ‘malign spirit’ was called Aquilo, the north wind. Its coldness meant the ‘frigidity of sinners.’
Jung documents the medieval theological equation of coldness with spiritual alienation, linking it to the malign northern spirit and the frigidity of the sinful soul.
, Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self, 1951thesis
What he sees as coldness, criticism, and rejection in the other person is merely the outward display of the same kind of terror of being hurt or proven inadequate that he himself is feeling.
Greene interprets interpersonal coldness as a Saturn-complex projection, where the coldness perceived in the other is a mirror of one’s own defended vulnerability.
, Saturn: A New Look at an Old Devil, 1976supporting
A frozen woman without nurture is inclined to turn to incessant ‘what if’ daydreams. But even if she is in this frozen condition, especially if she is in such a frozen condition, she must refuse the comforting fantasy.
Estés reads psychological coldness-as-freezing as a crisis state demanding active engagement rather than the anesthetic of fantasy, connecting frozen affect to deprivation of instinctual nurture.
, Women Who Run With the Wolves Myths and Stories of the Wild, 2017supporting
The coldness of stones is also related to death. As opposed to the warmth of the living, the psuche evokes coldness (psuchron).
Vernant establishes the ancient Greek structural opposition between living warmth and the coldness associated with the psyche and with death, tracing how stone-like coldness signifies departure from vitality.
, Myth and Thought Among the Greeks, 1983supporting
cold chills (coldness, frowning, sadness and anger)
Bannister’s empirical typology identifies a distinct ‘cold chills’ category — bodily coldness co-occurring with sadness and anger — as one of three phenomenologically distinct aesthetic chill responses.
, Distinct varieties of aesthetic chills in response to multimedia, 2019supporting
the waters which are above the mountains are similar to the air, as far as their coldness is concerned
Von Franz, summarizing alchemical-cosmological texts, notes coldness as one of the elemental qualities distributed across the four elements in the ancient schema of qualities.
, Creation Myths, 1995aside
slowness of wit is due to coldness of the blood around the heart
Onians traces the pre-Socratic physiological theory in which coldness of blood at the heart produces sluggishness of mind, linking psychic coldness to somatic temperature in early Greek thought.
, The origins of European thought about the body, the mind,, 1988aside