Soul Making stands as one of the most generative and contested concepts in the depth-psychological tradition, drawing its initial impetus from John Keats's letters before being systematically theorized by James Hillman and subsequently popularized by Thomas Moore. Within the corpus, the term carries a range of emphases that resist reduction to a single program. Hillman's formulation, developed across Re-Visioning Psychology, Archetypal Psychology, and The Dream and the Underworld, defines soul-making as the individuation of imaginal reality rather than of the human subject — a psycho-poesis that releases events from their literal register into mythical significance, equating the process with de-literalizing and with a sustained engagement with death-perspective. For Hillman, soul-making is neither self-improvement nor better mental health but a crafting, refining, and deepening of psychic substance. Moore translates this orientation into a practical ethics of daily life, insisting that symptoms are the raw material of soul-making and that care of the soul requires cultivating richly expressive soulfulness rather than solving problems. Marion Woodman claims the Keatsian origin independently while redirecting it toward embodied feminine consciousness. The key tension throughout is between soul-making as an imaginal-poetic discipline (Hillman) and as an ethical-relational cultivation (Moore), with both traditions united in their opposition to heroic, ego-driven, problem-solving models of psychic life.
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21 substantive passages
soul-making can be most succinctly defined as the individuation of imaginal reality... Soul-making is also described as imaging... releasing events from their literal understanding into a mythical appreciation... equated with de-literalizing
Hillman furnishes the canonical archetypal-psychological definition: soul-making is the individuation of images rather than persons, accomplished through de-literalizing and mythical seeing, and oriented toward death as its ultimate horizon.
only when imagination is recognized as an engagement at the borders of the human and a work in relation with mythic dominants can this articulation of images be considered a psycho-poesis (Miller 1976b), or soul-making
This parallel text reaffirms that soul-making requires engagement with mythic dominants and constitutes a psycho-poesis whose telos is the realization of images as psychic reality, not merely human subjectivity.
Hillman, James, Archetypal Psychology: A Brief Account, 1983thesis
metaphor serves a psychological function: it becomes an instrument of soul-making rather than a mere 'figure of speech' because it transposes the soul's questioning about its nature to a mythopoesis of actual imagining
Hillman argues that metaphor is not ornamental but constitutive of soul-making, functioning as the primary instrument by which the psyche images and deepens itself through ongoing mythopoetic creation.
the re-appraisal of psychology itself as an activity of poesis and the fact that fantasy is the archetypal activity of the psyche
Archetypal psychology's turn toward poetics and aesthetics positions soul-making as a fundamentally poetic rather than clinical enterprise, with fantasy as its native medium.
Hillman, James, Archetypal Psychology: A Brief Account, 1983supporting
Your symptoms are the raw material for your soul-making. If you are having emotional problems, don't automatically just try to get rid of them. Look at them closely to see what your soul needs.
Moore reformulates Hillman's poetic conception into an applied ethics: symptoms are not obstacles to be removed but the primary material through which soul is made, demanding attentive tending rather than therapeutic elimination.
Moore, Thomas, Care of the Soul Twenty-fifth Anniversary Edition: A Guide, 1992thesis
care of the soul is not primarily a method of problem solving. Its goal is not to make life problem-free, but to give ordinary life the depth and value that come with soulfulness.
Moore establishes the foundational distinction between care of the soul and conventional psychotherapy, framing soul-making as the cultivation of depth and meaning in ordinary life rather than the resolution of problems.
Moore, Thomas, Care of the Soul Twenty-fifth Anniversary Edition: A Guide, 1992thesis
it is only when the world enters the heart that it can be made into soul. The vessel in which soul-making takes place is an inner container scooped out by reflection and wonder.
Moore locates the site of soul-making in the reflective, receptive inner container formed by contemplation, positioning wonder and arrested attention as structural prerequisites for the process.
Moore, Thomas, Care of the Soul Twenty-fifth Anniversary Edition: A Guide, 1992thesis
we want not only 'old souls,' 'good souls,' and 'great souls,' but worked souls, in contact with whom we get a sense of what matters... How is this psychic matter made? How do we gain ground and earth, other than by work on our psychic stuff
Hillman frames soul-making as a craft of laborious psychic work that produces substance, ground, and matter — qualities distinguishing a worked soul from a merely natural or gifted one.
Hillman, James, The Dream and the Underworld, 1979supporting
Originally I was a student of English literature. I loved John Keats before I ever heard of psychology. He uses the phrase soul-making. He talks about learning life by heart.
Woodman traces the term's origin to Keats independently of archetypal psychology and redirects its meaning toward embodied, affective learning of life — differentiating her approach from Hillman's imaginal-poetic version.
Woodman, Marion, Conscious Femininity: Interviews With Marion Woodman, 1993supporting
neither 'self-improvement nor better mental health'... transformation of consciousness via deepening... emphasis on crafting, refining, making, psychopoiesis... as periods of suffering
This index-level summary of Hillman's usage confirms that soul-making is explicitly distinguished from therapeutic amelioration, characterized instead by deepening, suffering, and craft — a transformation of consciousness rather than its correction.
Russell, Dick, Life and Ideas of James Hillman, 2023supporting
Renaissance 'care of soul' looked less to social context and human experiences... an exercise of imagination, an exploration and discipline of the imaginal, whether through science, magic, study, love, art, or voyages
Hillman situates soul-making within the Renaissance humanitas tradition, grounding it historically as a discipline of imagination rather than social amelioration or Christian caritas.
In his essay on transference Jung stresses the importance of the human connection for soul-making, stating that man's 'soul... can live only in and from human relationships'
Hillman, citing Jung, introduces the relational dimension of soul-making: the interrelation of psyches is not incidental but constitutive, as souls can deepen only in reciprocal human encounter.
Hillman, James, The Myth of Analysis: Three Essays in Archetypal Psychology, 1972supporting
the soul cares for us by offering a way out of a narrow secularism. Its suffering can only be relieved by the reestablishment of a particular mythical sensibility. Therefore, its suffering initiates a move toward increased spirituality.
Moore locates a reciprocal dimension in care of the soul: pathological suffering is itself a mode of soul-making insofar as it drives the psyche beyond secular literalism toward mythical and spiritual reconstitution.
Moore, Thomas, Care of the Soul Twenty-fifth Anniversary Edition: A Guide, 1992supporting
we need to use soul-making to strengthen our own soul, and let that be a kind of shield or protection against the evil.
Woodman deploys soul-making in a defensive therapeutic register — as a practice that fortifies psychic substance against destructive forces — a usage that emphasizes soul as capacity to be built rather than image to be realized.
Woodman, Marion, Conscious Femininity: Interviews With Marion Woodman, 1993supporting
Care of the soul doesn't mean wallowing in the symptom, but it does mean trying to learn from depression what qualities the soul needs... weave those depressive qualities into the fabric of life
Moore demonstrates soul-making practice through the example of Saturn and depression, showing that the work consists not in eliminating darkness but in integrating its aesthetic qualities into lived texture.
Moore, Thomas, Care of the Soul Twenty-fifth Anniversary Edition: A Guide, 1992supporting
even Psyche's work of soul-making... Not for the sake of learning love only, or for community, or for better marriages and better families, or for independence does the psyche present its symptoms and neurotic claims
Hillman qualifies soul-making by showing its insufficiency alone: the psyche's demands exceed even the work of soul-making and require the spirit's verticality — a productive internal tension within depth psychology.
Hillman, James, Peaks and Vales: The Soul/Spirit Distinction as Basis for the Differences between Psychotherapy and Spiritual Discipline, 1975supporting
if you can tolerate the full weight of human possibility as the raw material for an alchemical, soulful life, then at the end of the path you may have a vision within yourself of the lapis
Moore casts soul-making in alchemical terms, framing the tolerance of shadow and human imperfection as the raw material whose refinement produces the philosophers' stone — the culmination of a soulful life.
Moore, Thomas, Care of the Soul Twenty-fifth Anniversary Edition: A Guide, 1992supporting
a revival of the world view known as anima mundi is essential for a renewal of psychology and for genuine care of the soul
Moore extends soul-making beyond the individual to the cosmos, arguing that care of the soul requires the recovery of anima mundi — a world animated by soul — thereby giving the practice an ecological and cosmological dimension.
Moore, Thomas, Care of the Soul Twenty-fifth Anniversary Edition: A Guide, 1992supporting
Observance is homeopathic in its workings rather than allopathic, in the paradoxical way that it befriends a problem rather than making an enemy of it.
Moore articulates the methodological posture proper to soul-making — attentive, non-heroic, homeopathic observance — as opposed to the allopathic combativeness of ego-driven therapeutic intervention.
Moore, Thomas, Care of the Soul Twenty-fifth Anniversary Edition: A Guide, 1992supporting
To live our ordinary life artfully is to have this sensibility about the things of daily life, to live more intuitively and to be willing to surrender a measure of our rationality and control in return for the gifts of soul.
Moore frames the arts and artful living as the practical medium of soul-making, positioning aesthetic sensibility and the surrender of rational control as the gifts that ordinary life offers to soul.
Moore, Thomas, Care of the Soul Twenty-fifth Anniversary Edition: A Guide, 1992aside
to care for the soul meant building, painting, and carving. His tower stands as the embodiment of his inner urgency for simplicity and eternity.
The example of Jung's Bollingen Tower illustrates soul-making as externalized imagination — the translation of inner urgency into concrete, crafted form that enacts rather than merely represents psychic life.
Moore, Thomas, Care of the Soul Twenty-fifth Anniversary Edition: A Guide, 1992aside