Rating: 
Summary: Depends on whose soul ...
Review: Hillman has written a good description of the kind of person commonly labeled "gifted." This person is characterized by a passion for a certain field of endeavor (be it music, mathematics, literature, politics, or painting), shows this passion early in life, and pursues it with enthusiasm, focus, and indifference to others' opinions. On the other hand, personifying this passion as a "daimon," while paying tribute to its force, seems redundant and clumsy to me: what's wrong with saying that this particular constellation of personality traits is "innate" and leaving it at that?
My other objection is that Hillman implies that EVERYONE has such a "passion," and this simply isn't true: although people's talents and interests vary widely, not everyone has this degree of commitment to one particular area. Some people are "generalists," happiest when they can pursue a variety of interests. By suggesting that everybody has, or should have, a single focus in life, Hillman is presenting a rather narrow view of human potential.
Finally, as other critics have pointed out, this is a badly written book, diffuse and repetitious. I felt that he said everything he had to say in the first couple of chapters, and from then on he just repeated himself endlessly. His insights have applicability to certain people, but not everyone, and it's presumptuous of him to claim otherwise.
Rating:
Summary: Corny Old Man Gets In The Way of Good Ideas
Review: Hillman is unique, in that he dares to position himself inside and yet between several different fields of study. Passing over philosophy, psychology, history and biography it becomes evident that he probably should have focused on his strength: psychology. He does offer a genuine and even touching critique of the field and produces a new (actually very old)path of development for thoughts about the self. Hillman's cornyness, however, is unrestrained in this book. You will often feel yourself shudder at the management-book quality crap and the 'I sort of understand this' name dropping. Nonetheless Hillman directs attention to character and uniqueness, and gives individuals plenty to think about. If you are into a little soul-searching and can handle a grandpa like humdrum, this may be the book you're looking for. Otherwise, Hillman's Kinds of Power is the better book (especially since it is unabashadly of management-book quality).
Rating: 
Summary: Jump on the Bandwagon, Make a Buck
Review: His next book will, I suppose, have something about angels in its title. Or is that angles? A lot of neoplatonist claptrap, this one. Mr. Hillman should perhaps do some studying of modern cognitive science.
Rating: 
Summary: a refreshing antidote to reductionist, mainstream psychology
Review: I am on my second reading of this book, having read it once a couple of years ago and let the ideas percolate in the back of my mind. It is one of the most liberating books I have ever read. As an adult survivor of child abuse, I was in therapy for over 16 years and never felt that mainstream psychologists have any idea of just how powerful our soul's nature is. A system of healing which leaves out our spiritual energies-- and our ability to transform our realities into the stuff of myth--is an impotent system, at least if you are someone whose roots run very deep. I made little progress in my own healing until I began working on the spiritual and soul aspects of my life. Hillman writes that we are not as shaped by the horrors of our early upbringing as we are told by psychotherapists. What an inspiration for transcending the past! Unlike authors such as Carolyn Myss, he offers this teaching in a way that does not blame people for their anger about the past. He simply offers a way beyond the anger and other self-imposed limits, cheerfully and graciously. The detractors of this book state that it is not scientific enough. Of course it is not scientific--it's about bringing the energies of the invisible into your life. You don't have to do reductionist studies of the principles involved to have them change your way of thinking about yourself... I recommend this book to anyone who is tired of the dry, sterile approach to healing offered by professional counselors who have not themselves explored the "realms beyond" and therefore cannot teach us how to experience them for our benefit.
Rating:
Summary: One of the greatest books I've ever read
Review: I read a lot, but this book by Hillman's is one of my all-time favorites. His perspective is brilliant, unapologetically counter-culture, enormously insightful and deeply inspiring. There's a sarcastic bite to his writing that makes it even more entertaining: you sense that this man is no pushover.I won't even attempt to summarize Hillman's argument here. Read this book if you've ever been curious about the soul, or why a life work sometimes seems at odds with the "human" story, or if you've agonized over the search for meaning in your own life. By way of context, I'll mention that my interest in understanding the soul more deeply is professional as well as personal. I've published the how-to video "Thrill Your Soul: Inspiration for Choosing Your Work and Relationships," and I work with clients and students to help them connect with their life purpose. When it comes to this topic, I'm not as sardonically no-nonsense as Hillman appears to be from his writing, but it still takes a lot to impress me. Hillman has become one of my heroes, thanks to this magnificent book.
Rating:
Summary: Poor grammar, second class reasoning
Review: I stopped reading this book at page 60. I gave him 20 pages to redeem himself at page 40. Sophistry, sexism and parental phobia run rampant through his poorly constructed sentences. His argument against chronological causality is rendered defunct when he argues for daimon as the cause. I do not deny the possibility of the daimon but why must it be so single minded? Are there not multiple callings? Cannot a person be coded or guided for multiple missions including love? The absence of love as a destiny, of daimon inspired parental love makes Hillman's book chilling and uninspired. I would argue that Hillman, if being true to his daimon, is destined merely to be exceptionally bitter. The fact that this book was published would indicate, according to his philosophy, that Hillman's daimon resonates with many others. Cannot the daimons be at fault?
Rating:
Summary: Good ideas, bad execution
Review: I was ready to like what Hillman had to say. The idea that we each have a calling -- some marriage of talent, interest and drive toward a specific destiny -- appeals to me. In fact, I liked many of Hillman's concepts (importance of beauty, the parental fallacy, over-medication of our youth, abandoning the 'invisibles,' having a vision for your children). However, the execution was attrocious. Whenever I knew anything about the studies that Hillman was quoting, I found them to be twisted out of context. I showed the section on beauty to a friend who is writing a dissertation on aesthetics, and he (my friend) pointed out a number of mistakes. (For instance, Hillman quotes Thomas Aquinas saying that beauty arrests motion. What Aquinas actually says is that it is impossible to see true beauty in the world. He says that pure beauty is only present in God, the unmoved mover. So, while to see God would be to see a lack of motion, Hillman is really stretching Aquinas's words to use this philosphy to say that taking time for beautiful things would slow down our fast-paced lives and bring us inner peace.) Also, I wanted more detail for some of his ideas. He never really tells us how to grow down or "feed" our individual daimon. In the final analysis, I would have liked better research, more focus on how to implement his principles, and perhaps less sarcasm about any other theory that doesn't agree with his.
Rating: 
Summary: A book for romantics (in the broadest sense)
Review: I've just read the reviews on this book - 21 to date. And to most of them, I would politely suggest: Lighten up, folks! I found Dr. Hillman's ideas to be fascinating. Through this book he furthered my understanding of a number of issues. If you lean more toward a romantic philosophy of life, I would highly recommend this book - especially the sections on recognizing the invisibles in our lives. No witch hunt, I believe that Hillman is trying to go in a completely different direction: creating respect for those invisibles who support us without falling into the concreteness of either superstition or empirical science - both of which render the invisibles invisible.
Rating:
Summary: Meandering along aimlessly...
Review: I've never written a negative review before, but keep looking if you're trying to find a book on the "soul". The writer meanders aimlessly through the book, almost like a very long free-association about anything and everything... yet, ironically about nothing substantive at all. It's full of generalities and countless shallow ideas-- like the basic analogy that runs through the work: the acorn theory of calling, fate, and character. (Yawn.) Other words that come to mind to describe this: inane, trite, boring, obvious. And the extensive peppering of references to the great minds of philosophy and psychology (etc.) doesn't raise the level of the work. Did you ever have a college professor that could drone for an entire hour and say virtually nothing? That's what we have here in written form. Finally, the style is awkward. An example: "The contrary direction to narrowing nature to brain simplistics is expanding nurture to a far more embracing notion of environment. If environment means literally what's around, it must also mean whatever is around." (What?!) Get ready for almost 300 pages of that.
Rating:
Summary: A celebration of the uniqueness of each of us
Review: If you have a Jungian slant to your view of the person than this book is for you. If you think it was your parents who "did it to you" then this book will set you free of that fantasy. Parents are not as important as we, and our culture make them out to be in the overall grand scheme of things. For example, think of the role non-parents had in helping shape who you are. Could these people be natural mentors? Hillman says so. This is not easy reading I read it twice only because the first time I finished it I could not stop thinking about it so was driven to read it again, and lo and behold, I got way more out of it the second time. Read it and see you life from a different view point. Enjoy.
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