ABSTRACT
James Hillman was a craftsman in his use of language, and returned to the theme of how language can evoke and honor soul, again and again. Hillman's essay articulates a crucial psychological perspective that makes a substantial contribution to an issue that has crossed, and must cross, disciplinary boundaries: the health of one's fragile planet. Hillman vastly preferred the "vale of soul-making" to the peaks, where the world was less pure but more rich, complex, and troubling. The importance of notitia in research emerged in recent years when psychodynamic theory gained an unlikely ally. One of the surprising outcomes of the "decade of the brain" is that a new group of experts, developmental neurobiologists, is noticing faith, hope, love and other emotions and they are noticing the act of noticing itself. The necessity of journeying to the underworld is a consistent theme in Hillman's work, developed most fully in The Dream and the Underworld.
