James Hillman founded archetypal psychology and posited a “union of sames” concept, which holds two opposite archetypes in unity. As defined in Jungian psychology, archetypes are instinctual patterns of energy that are universal in nature—meaning, the experience of archetypal phenomena is the same for everyone.
Hillman suggested that archetypes have “a secret identity of two halves—two halves not of life, but of a single archetype” (Hillman, 2021, p. 56). This means that polarity within the archetypes is inherent and a single archetype has only the potentiality for polarity. In fact, a single archetype has a double aspect or two faces that are separated only by a psychic incapacity to transform one into the other or to integrate both into ego-consciousness. In essence, Hillman viewed opposite archetypes as one and the same. This suggests that it is possible to experience opposite phenomena simultaneously and essentially hold the tension of opposites.
The archetypes Senex (wise old man) and Puer (eternal child) can be written as senex-et-puer or puer-et-senex where “et” is Latin for “and.” The middle of two opposing archetypes depicts a conjunction that joins two poles or holds two independently indefinable things together. Hillman illustrated the phenomenon of experiencing both at the same time in terms of a “union-forming effect of dialectic … the question why and the answer I know [where] in answering one’s own question [and] in questioning one’s own answer, the two faces turned toward each other in dialogue” (2021, pp. 10-11).
This idea echoes Heraclitus’s view that opposites are identical, the principle of enantiodromia stating that all things turn into their opposites, Jung’s view that opposites unite over time, and mythical and religious views that personify the archetypal experience of holding duality. By way of example, Dionysus in Greek mythology personifies the unification of sensual and sensuous pleasures—bodily desires and spiritual satisfactions. Jesus Christ in Christian theology personifies the unity of human ego suffering and the divine resurrection of egoic surrender—body and spirit or human and divine. In Jungian psychology, the archetype of the Self personifies the union of consciousness and unconsciousness through the process of individuation. Hillman’s perspective takes an archetypal experience at face value by drawing attention away from duality and toward a likeness that underlies duality—a way of seeing through the literal.
Hillman was interested in what the human psyche is doing—or, more specifically, what the human psyche is making. Through this lens, the psyche is not an object to analyze but a subject that can see. Through its capacity to see, the psyche makes images, and these images make Soul. In a union of sames concept, object and subject are not opposites but the same and they are joined together in soul-making. Soul-making is the “et” between two opposing archetypes—the “and” or the conjunction between two opposing archetypal experiences.
To emphasize soul-making is to emphasize two faces turning toward each other in dialogue. It does not try to solve the problem of duality or resolve the paradox or problem of opposites; it simply honors the spiritual experience in a material world.