James Hillman, psychologist and philosopher, scholar of ancient religions and expert on Mediterranean art and culture, was born in Atlantic City, USA in 1926. He graduated from Trinity College in Dublin and then did his Ph. D. at the University of Zurich under Jung. He did his psychoanalytical training at the C. G. Jung Institute, where he went on to work for several years as Director of Studies. In 1969, he underwent a profound crisis, which led him to completely reconsider the way he understood analysis, and left Switzerland. The next year, in London, he published his first non-fiction best seller, Emotions: a comprehensive phenomenology of Theories and Their Meanings for Therapy.

He started a new Jungian school on the basis of his insights, with the objective of enhancing the imagination and the sensitivity of the individual. Archetypal psychology, the movement founded by Hillman, immediately met with great success and strongly renewed the Jungian tradition for all practical purposes. Re-Visioning Psychology, published in 1975, confirmed and emphasized Hillman's interest in the study of the soul, conducted through the analysis of the lives of great people of the past (Marsilio Ficino, Giordano Bruno and Giambattista Vico in this case) which he analysed as though they were clinical cases. Hillman used this style once more in The soul's code (1996), a book that is considered his masterpiece in Italy and the United States. Hillman retuned to the United States in 1978, first to Dallas, then to Thompson, in Connecticut.

His published works include Pan and the Nightmare (1972, Italian edition 1977), Anima (1985, Italian edition1989), Facing the Gods (1980, Italian Edition 1991), The Soul's Code: On Character and Calling (1996, Italian edition 1997), Puer papers (1979, Italian edition 1999), The Force of Character (1999, Italian edition 2000), The Thought of the Heart and the Soul of the World (1992 Italian edition 2002) whose Italian editions are published by Adelphi; Il piacere di pensare (The pleasure of thinking,1991), L'anima del mondo. Conversazione con Silvia Ronchey (The soul of the world, conversations with Silvia Ronchey 2000) e Kinds of Power (1995, Italian edition 2002) published in Italy by Rizzoli.

Day and hour of the speech