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Selected Essays of Ladson Hinton: Psychoanalytic and Existential Reflections on Shame and Temporality

Editor : Hessel Willemsen

Reviews and Endorsements

This is a book filled with surprising insights, humour, and deep wisdom. Ladson Hinton is an unusually bold and creative Jungian psychoanalyst whose genius for original and provocative thinking shines through brightly in these fabulous essays. What a gift that these contributions to the field of psychoanalysis have now been collected and published. I recommend a deep reading of them to all who have been called to bear the burden of working in this soulful tradition.
Murray Stein, PhD, author of Four Pillars of Jungian Psychoanalysis

This collection of writings by Ladson Hinton invites the reader into a captivating and extended fireside conversation that delightfully ignores the stodgy boundaries that would keep philosophy and psychology apart. With a unique flare for vivid examples, a deep sense of appreciation for history, a vivid capacity to describe meaning in art, and incredibly insightful readings of texts, Hinton draws readers into a deeper and more profound understanding of our shared world. These pieces were not originally written to constitute a coherent whole, but they hold together remarkably well as a series of delightful thought experiments and investigations. To read this book is to make a friend - the kind of friend that gently invites one to think more astutely, to care more effectively, and to live with authenticity and intentionality.
Eric R. Severson, Associate Teaching Professor of Philosophy, Seattle University

A debt of gratitude is owed Dr. Hessel Willemsen for compiling this remarkable tour of a full, rich, complex analytic life of an esteemed friend and colleague, Dr. Ladson Hinton. The selection of articles retains their vibrancy and relevance in an almost timeless manner. The weaving of Dr. Hinton’s personal narrative into the text creates a warm relatedness that invites deeper exploration of the topics offered. Taken as a whole the reader is offered a mosaic of individuation, to be savored repeatedly.
Joseph Cambray, PhD, IAAP - Past-president IAAP - Past-President/CEO Pacifica Graduate Institute

One of the pleasures of my decades of friendship and collegial discussions with Ladson has been the gift of his wide-ranging perspective on life in general as well as the life of the mind. That view is well represented in this compilation of his writings. A glance at the richness and variety of topics is reminiscent of the many conversations that I had the privilege to partake of with him. While Ladson’s leadership and scholarship in the Jungian psychoanalytic perspective are noteworthy, his generosity and wisdom are a gift to all of us.
Maxine Anderson, MD, teaches and writes in Seattle, Washington

These collected works of Ladson Hinton reflect a deep passion and curiosity about being human – in all its wide-ranging permutations. He has never been content to follow one luminaries’ voice, but rather the interdisciplinary thought from diverse and creative scholars. His opus is an intertextual and dialogical montage, originating from early philosophical interests in existence, phenomena and temporality, over pre-existing, hierarchical and essential ideals that lie beyond knowing (Kant).
He illustrates these developing themes throughout his work: shame as a teacher (von Eschenbach); seeking lowly wisdom over the heights of Heaven (Milton);the medieval Court Fool, invoking the fertility of the unconscious , who breaks his King’s egoic certainty, sterility and lifelessness; the decentered subject (LaPlanche); the Pharmakon identifying the cure in the poison and the poison in the cure (Plato, Stiegler); societies’ Ominous Transitions wrought by the shadow of Enlightenment and modernity.
These are reflective of the values at his moral core. He’s told me often, “We’re all just clumps of dirt.” Just humus (earth)-human-humble... These dialogical ideas deconstruct the narcissistic, all-knowing subject/self/ author/authority-sameness that is privileged over the dialogical otherness and the multitudinous voices who claim no final answer or end (Dostoevsky, Bakhtin, Levinas). The temporal human experience of being in the messiness and suffering of life calls into question Eternal, Transcendent and pre-existing Truths that attempt to remain above the blows of time.
The wonderful case vignettes scattered throughout his writings bring into bold relief this ethos. They break the stiff confines and intransigence of much of traditional psychiatric and psychoanalytical work, through warmth, humor, deep intuitive presence, and his recognition of the meaningfulness of all psychic experience. He accomplishes this without sacrificing his strong ethical barometer.
I am thrilled, without reservation, to recommend this volume reflecting the profound life and work of Ladson Hinton.
Kenneth Kimmel, Jungian psychoanalyst, co-founder of the New School for Analytical Psychology