Rating: 
Summary: Leaves you wanting more -- and not in a good way
Review: "The Soul's Code" starts with an interesting idea, the Acorn Theory, where an individual's talents lies as dormant and inevitable as the oak tree inside an acorn. Those essential qualities of one's talents are fed and nurtured throughout one's life, and while the final size, shape and appearance of a tree are determined by many factors, the acorn will grow into an oak as long as it is able to grow. Not a pine tree, not a rose bush, not a ficus, but an oak. And while this theory applied to humans is an interesting and somewhat far-fetched one, it does have a certain appeal, explaining why some people have an almost preternatural gift for art, music, writing, speech and so on. Basically, their acorns were allowed to grow into what they were destined to be, unfettered and unrestrained.But maintaining this theory is a bit of a magic act, requiring some sleights-of -hand and diversions to keep the audience from picking up on those telling signs that something else is going on. Hillman tries to come up with a grand theory that can explain genius, but contradicts himself on some points along the way. The biggest one I found, or the one that bothered me the most, anyway, explained violent and destructive acts. In Chapter 10, "The Bad Seed, " he uses as examples both Adolf Hitler and a woman named Mary Bell, who, at 10 years of age, strangled to death two boys, aged four and three, in two separate incidents. In both of these people, says Hillman, a lifetime of indicators showed that these were evil acorns leading to evil oaks. Hmm, interesting, except that in every other example and anecdote he related in the preceding chapters, people would become violent when their true talents were not allowed to take shape. In the very first chapter he uses the example of Elias Canetti, Nobel Prize winner for literature in 1981, and his confrontation at age five with his slightly older cousin, who was learning to read and write. When she teases him and refuses to let him see her notebooks, holding them above her head and out of his reach: "All at once, I left her there and walked the long way around the house to the kitchen yard, to get the Armenian's ax and kill her with it...I raised the ax high and...marched back over the long path into the courtyard with a murderous chant on my lips, repeating incessantly: ...'Now I'm going to kill Laurica! Now I'm going to kill Laurica!'" How cute! Hillman's response? "They seem to have no other choice. Canetti had to have letters and words; how else could he ever be a writer?" That's all? One is left with the old conundrum: What if Hitler had been a better painter? It seems flippant and facetious, but with everything Hillman has written to this point, it seems a valid question. What if Hitler, Mary Bell, and any other evil individual in history were encouraged to develop their talents, to tend to their acorns? Hillman dismisses such thoughts. Hitler was inherently evil, and he goes to great lengths to try and prove this. Only a person who was born evil and had talents only for evil deeds could do what he did and what Mary Bell did. While Elias Canetti may run around, swinging an ax at his cousin to get her notebooks -- a disproportionate response to the situation if ever there was one -- that's just the passion of his latent talent exercising a kind of survival instinct. Hitler's "cold stare" as a child, however, proved that he would grow up to be a genocidal maniac. Huh? The book's reach exceeds its grasp, though, and the whole thing starts crumbling from that point on. It had taken an effort from the beginning to make the whole theory hold together in my mind, but once the doubt seeped in, it was difficult to resist finding an example of my own for every one he used, easily poking holes in his reasoning. While "The Soul's Code" makes for an interesting launching point for a bull session, it doesn't work as a grand psychological theory.
Rating: 
Summary: What Do I Do When I Grow Up?
Review: Why have I felt like there is 'something I was meant to do?' After reading this book, I had a new idea. I also started questioning many of the things I 'knew' about myself. What more can you ask of a book? If you don't want to think about yourself, don't read this book!!
Rating:
Summary: one of his soulful best
Review: Although most of the existing reviews have captured what I wanted to say about this book, I wish to clarify that Hillman differentiates between teleology (destiny is everything) and telos (we all have a core "push" to do various things with our lives). I find his acorn metaphor accurate and inspiring, and I recommend this book to anyone uncertain of how to discover a path toward living out those dreams that emanate from the depths. "Where there is no vision, the people perish."
Rating: 
Summary: A somewhat one-sided, cursory introduction to the "daimonic"
Review: Anyone familiar with the brilliant, prolific, mercurial musings of Jungian analyst James Hillman over the past few decades knows that this is not anywhere near his best work. Here Hillman takes up the extremely timely idea of the "daimon" (timely because the denial or chronic suppression of the daimonic underlies the "senseless violence" and epidemic psychopathology so prevalent in our contemporary culture), describing it as a predestined factor in character and calling, something akin to that which causes an acorn to become an oak. Freud felt character was fairly well set by age five; Hillman now deterministically suggests this is true at birth. But people are not acorns. When Heraclitus said "Man's character is his daimon," he did not mean that the daimon determines one's destiny. Far from it. The daimonic is fate in so far as we are each subject to it and responsible for directing its vital energies such as anger or rage. (I disagree that one's daimon is fully developed at birth, but believe it is further formed or deformed by subsequent life events.) Still, despite the powerful psychobiological influence of the daimons, it is we who decide our own destiny by how we personally and collectively deal with the daimonic, i.e., destructively or constructively. In this subtle, existential process lies the psychogenesis of human violence, evil, and creativity--a crucial point Dr. Hillman neglects in this book. The decision is ours, not our daimon's.
Rating:
Summary: If you are in search of character of calling, look here
Review: Excellent book, profound and wise and digestible
Rating:
Summary: Not specific enough
Review: For anyone looking for direction, this book fails. Theory is fine, but I found myself asking repeatedly, "OK, what do I DO about this?" The book offered few, if any , answers. If you want to find YOUR soul's code, don't look to this book for any help.
Rating:
Summary: The place to start! Everyone needs to read this book!
Review: For anyone who wishes to learn psycology this is book 1! Mr. Hillman is in the work of saving Souls, and weather you or a friend has been injured, this book is what you need!Every one needs to read this book!
Rating: 
Summary: good vibrations
Review: good and possitive vibrations is what you get after reading this book. I like the whole reasoning that it gives for "following your bliss". It makes you feel justified when you are doing that which you like most, in that you are really keeping in touch with your innermost layer and building the stronghold of your being. I didn't like, though, the stress on famous people. The author could have also picked an example of an ordinary but happy and successful life story.
Rating:
Summary: What is you soul calling you to do?
Review: Hillerman says that we each have a particular, unique calling in life. He intersperses complex psychological research along with many fascinating mini-biographies of famous people to make his point. I at times lost track of where he was going, and other times didn't quite agree with his logic, but overall found this a very thought provoking read. He presents a fine balance between fate and free choice leaning towards the inevitability of much of our lives due to our unique character. This mindset allows him to shed dignity on those exceptional odd characters in human history who were troubled yet left much behind. Reading The Soul's Code encouraged me to take up a number of biographies and to see my life more as it's own story, it's own drama, which I'm writing as I go along. What a powerfully neat way to view human existence.
Rating:
Summary: Basic truths, basic misunderstandings
Review: Hillman has written a fair enough book here. I like the use of anecdotes and biography. They give the book a refreshingly human feel, as opposed to coldly scientific accounts which often throw out the baby with the bathwater - ie. all that is essentially human, because the essence of being human is invisible. The human spirit is invisible, the Daimon is invisible. But this does not necessarily mean they do not exist. The book suffers from one overriding weakness. Hillman repeatedly fails to distinguish the difference between the voice of the Daimon and the lower impulses of the ego. In my opinion the Daimon is essentially a positive force calling from within to help one reach one's highest potential, and to work with the gifts that one has. Yet it is not the only inner impulse that we have. If Jack the Ripper is driven by insatiable rage and sexual disfunction, is this also the voice of the Daimon? Hillman says so, but I disagree. Neurosis is by and large a function of one's personal history, one's traumas, one's abuses. It is the unconscious conditioning process that emerges from these experiences that creates these inner compulsions, the unhealthy or even demonic behaviors that we may possess. Hillman's seeming rejection of all contemporary psychology's insights seems rather poorly founded. Hillman is wrong to say that Hitler was driven by his Daimon. Hitler was driven by an altogether different part of the psyche. The ability to distinguish between the lower and higher impulses of one's own psyche is an absolutely essential aspect of spiritual and mental health, and Hillman's failure to understand this could be potentially harmful. It could well be seen as a validation of those lower impulses.
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