He founded a movement toward archetypal psychology and retired into private practice, writing and traveling to lecture, until his death at his home in Connecticut.

[1] His maternal grandfather was Joseph Krauskopf, a rabbi in the Reform Judaism movement, who emigrated to the United States from Prussia.

[1] He served in the U.S. Navy Hospital Corps from 1944 to 1946, after which he attended the University of Paris, studying English Literature, and Trinity College, Dublin, graduating with a degree in mental and moral science in 1950.

[1] His 1997 book, The Soul's Code: In Search of Character and Calling, was on The New York Times Best Seller List that year.

To illustrate the multiple personifications of psyche Hillman made reference to gods, goddesses, demigods and other imaginal figures which he referred to as sounding boards "for echoing life today or as bass chords giving resonance to the little melodies of daily life"[5] although he insisted that these figures should not be used as a 'master matrix' against which we should measure today and thereby decry modern loss of richness.

He is the immediate ancestor in a long line that stretches back through Freud, Dilthey, Coleridge, Schelling, Vico, Ficino, Plotinus, and Plato to Heraclitus – and with even more branches yet to be traced.

[7] Hillman’s influences include Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, Henry Corbin, John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Petrarch, and Paracelsus, who share a common concern for psyche.

[citation needed] Accordingly, Hillman's work has been an attempt to restore psyche to what he believes to be "its proper place" in psychology.

A great portion of Hillman’s thought attempts to attend to the speech of the soul as it is revealed via images and fantasies.

Within this is the idea that by re-working images, that is giving them attention and shaping and forming them until they are clear as possible then a therapeutic process which Hillman calls "soul making" takes place.

Hillman equates the psyche with the soul and seeks to set out a psychology based without shame in art and culture.

In this text Hillman suggests that dreams show us as we are; diverse, taking very different roles, experiencing fragments of meaning that are always on the tip of consciousness.

Because archetypal psychology is concerned with fantasy, myth, and image, dreams are considered to be significant in relation to soul and soul-making.

This descriptive strategy keeps the image alive, in Hillman's opinion, and offers the possibility for understanding the psyche.

The book describes how a unique, individual energy of the soul is contained within each human being, displayed throughout their lifetime and shown in their calling and life's work when it is fully actualized.

The book suggests reconnection with the third, superior factor, in discovering our individual nature and in determining who we are and our life's calling.

His arguments are also considered to be in line with the puer aeternus or eternal youth whose brief burning existence could be seen in the work of romantic poets like Keats and Byron and in recently deceased young rock stars like Jeff Buckley or Kurt Cobain.

Hillman also rejects causality as a defining framework and suggests in its place a shifting form of fate whereby events are not inevitable but bound to be expressed in some way dependent on the character of the soul of the individual.

"[15] Marie-Louise von Franz regards identification with the puer aeternus as a neurosis belonging to the narcissistic spectrum.

[16] Against this, Hillman has argued that the puer is not under the sway of a mother complex but that it is best seen in relation to the senex or father archetype.