James Hollis

James Hollis, Ph.D., (www.jameshollis.net) was born in Springfield, Illinois. He graduated with an A.B. from Manchester College in 1962 and with a Ph.D. from Drew University in 1967. He taught the Humanities 26 years in various colleges and universities before retraining as a Jungian analyst at the Jung Institute of Zurich, Switzerland (1977-82).

Dr. Hollis is currently a licensed Jungian analyst in private practice in Houston, Texas.  He also teaches at the Jung Center of Houston where he served as Executive Director from 1997-2008.   He is a distinguished faculty member of Saybrook Graduate School in San Francisco and maintains an extensive national speaking schedule.

Dr. Hollis lives with his wife Jill, an artist and therapist, and together they have four adult children. He is a retired Senior Training Analyst for the Inter-Regional Society of Jungian Analysts, was the first Director of Training of the Philadelphia Jung Institute, and is vice-president of the Philemon Foundation, which is dedicated to the publication of the complete works of Jung.

He has written thirteen books, the most recent being What Matters Most: Living a More Considered Life which addresses the questions that emerge from our depths:  Why are we here?  What is the meaning of existence?   What truly matters most in life?

In an interview with the California Literary Review in 2007 about his book Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life, Dr Hollis says,

“There is nothing wrong with happiness, but as we all know, it is ephemeral, conditional, and contextual. Flushed and bloated as our culture is on material possessions, which could only be dreamt by our ancestors, we are still listless, bored, depressed, and addictively in search of escalated diversion. If all that we have made us happy, as a steady state, we would see it. What is it we wish to be distracted from? What is missing is a deep sense of purpose. We can obtain all that we seek and still feel deracinated, aimless, and dispirited unless we feel that we stand in relationship to something which is transcendent to the vagaries of the moment.

For some this will be found in nature, for others in relational moments, for others in their work, their creativity, their suffering—or all of the above. Meaning is experienced when we are pulled deeply into something, perhaps more deeply than is comfortable. Meaning is experienced as a resonance, something within which resonates in the encounter—this is not something which can be willed up by ego. Meaning is experienced when we are stretched and enlarged. This is why meaning often comes out of our visits to the savannahs of suffering even more than the palace of pleasure. Meaning always involves engagement with mystery—the mystery which arises out of depth, out of the radical other, out of vast bounds of being.”