Within the depth-psychology corpus, hope occupies a liminal position between life-force and illusion, between theological virtue and psychological defense. Hillman offers the most searching interrogation: drawing on the physician’s maxim that ‘where there is life, there is hope,’ he simultaneously identifies hope as the fundamental emotional engine of life and — echoing Eliot — as ‘the fundamental deceit,’ the expectation that carries us away from present reality. This double valence is irreducible and constitutive of the term’s psychological weight. The Philokalic tradition treats hope quite differently: as one of three cardinal theological virtues — alongside faith and love — that together sustain the soul in its ascent toward God. Peter of Damaskos defines it as ‘life free from all anxiety, wealth hidden from the senses but attested by the understanding.’ In patristic sources hope functions cognitively, bringing future realities into present experience, and thereby fortifying the soul against demonic assault and the seductions of despair. Bion introduces a specifically group-psychological register, warning that Messianic hope — when it materializes — paradoxically extinguishes hope itself, since it leaves nothing further to anticipate. Across classical, therapeutic, and mystical registers, hope is consistently paired with its shadow — hopelessness, despair, suicide — rendering it not a simple positive affect but a tensional field within which psychic and spiritual life is constituted.
if hope is the fundamental emotional force of life, perhaps it is also, as Eliot hints, the opposite: the fundamental deceit, as the expectation and desire that takes us away from the moment.
Hillman poses hope as both the animating force of life and its constitutive self-deception, establishing the central ambivalence that organizes depth-psychological engagement with the term.
, Suicide and the Soul, 1964thesis
Hope Life is hope free from all anxiety, wealth hidden from the senses but attested by the understanding and by the true nature of things.
Peter of Damaskos offers a contemplative definition of hope as a form of hidden, anxiety-free wealth — invisible to the senses but epistemologically verified by the intellect and the nature of things.
, The Philokalia, Volume 4, 1995thesis
Hope brings before its eyes this help promised by faith and drives off the enemy’s attack. Love kills the enemy’s provocations within the devout intellect, utterly obliterating them with deep longing for the divine.
The Philokalia positions hope as the mediating virtue that renders faith’s promises present and thereby functions as active armor against spiritual assault.
, The Philokalia, Volume 4, 1995thesis
In so far as it succeeds, hope is weakened; for obviously nothing is then to hope for, and, since destructiveness, hatred, and despair have in no way been radically influenced, their existence again makes itself felt.
Bion argues that the materialization of Messianic hope in group life paradoxically destroys hope itself, because it leaves despair and destructiveness unaddressed while eliminating the future-orientation that hope requires.
, Experiences in Groups and Other Papers, 1959thesis
Hope is the special theme of Christianity. St Paul tries to make it a distinctive feature when he says, referring to the hope of resurrection, ‘Sorrow not, as those who have no hope.’
Sorabji traces the philosophical genealogy of hope from Plato and Aristotle through Stoic and Christian appropriations, identifying resurrection hope as the distinctively Christian contribution to the concept’s history.
, Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation, 2000supporting
Faith requires a steadfast soul, while hope needs a firm will and an honest heart. How can a man have hope concerning the hidden things held in store unless through his own integrity he has gained some experience of the Lord’s gifts?
The Philokalia insists that genuine hope is not a passive disposition but demands volitional and moral conditions — firm will and integrity — alongside divine grace.
, The Philokalia, Volume 4, 1995supporting
The hope the physician serves is the patient’s demand for more life, not better life, not transformed life.
Hillman distinguishes medical hope — quantitative extension of life — from analytic hope oriented toward transformation, exposing the secular medical imagination as insufficient for genuine salvific work.
, Suicide and the Soul, 1964supporting
Hope is the strength of the two pre-eminent gifts of love and faith, since hop[e provides a firm basis for truth].
The Philokalia presents hope as the structural support of both faith and love within the classical triad, giving those virtues their durability and enabling orientation toward divine truth.
, The Philokalia, Volume 2, 1981supporting
endeavor always to transcend sensible things, and through hope alone to cleave to God. Then you will find principalities and powers fighting against you, deflecting you against your will and provoking you to sin.
Hope here functions as the sole instrument of transcendence, enabling cleaving to God while simultaneously exposing the soul to intensified spiritual opposition.
, The Philokalia, Volume 4, 1995supporting
it would seem the hope of medical treatment is to achieve that utopia where there are no patients.
Hillman critiques medicine’s utopian hope — the elimination of all illness — as a denial of human frailty that ultimately dehumanizes both patient and healer.
, Suicide and the Soul, 1964supporting
Spirituality was described as hope… Spirituality was repeatedly named a primary source of hope and reassurance that life will improve, especially at low points.
In the clinical context of addiction recovery, spirituality and hope are experienced as effectively identical — hope emerges as the psychological face of spiritual engagement with a higher power.
, A Focus-Group Study on Spirituality and Substance-User Treatment, 2010supporting
A bleak picture: Hoping against hope
The chapter title in an addiction-recovery narrative invokes the idiom of hope against hope to name the condition of those who persist in seeking recovery despite near-total desolation of circumstances.
, Survivors of Addiction: Narratives of Recovery, 2011aside
thumos and noos are equally misled by hope… Thumos is described thus only here in the these early poets but elsewhere we do hear of an ‘empty noos’.
The early Greek poetic tradition associates hope with the capacity to render both thumos (passionate spirit) and noos (mind) ‘empty’ or ‘fickle,’ treating hope as a force that misleads psychic faculties.
, Psychological and Ethical Ideas What Early Greeks Say, 1995aside