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And unlike the "upward" transcendence into the light, the pathologizing transcendence downwards really does deflate the ego, which is why we hate it and resist it so much.
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Mark, to a point I agree with this, but the problem with Hillman is he never really cuts the mystic some slack. Say someone has been deflated in said downward path. Would you or Hillman then give the thumbs up on upward movement? Or is transcendence nixed from the get-go? Having read nearly all of Hillman myself, and admiring him a great deal, I still think he himself is defended against just that, transcendence. He doesn’t really come to terms with it, always deflates it to his psychological terms—even when it’s the real thing, not just pie-in-the-sky phony spirituality. This is why his writings don’t go anywhere near the transcendent profundity of, say, a Meister Eckhart or Eriugena, or Plato in a dialogue such as the Parmenides. He avoids taking them on, reduces them to the terms of his Archetypal Psychology. I’m afraid that Hillman can be as reductionist as the Freudians and Jungians he accuses of that. Ironically, people can be “too literal” about “pathologizing” too, as evidenced by any number of Hillman’s epigones.
I do agree with what he says about our society’s manic denial of depression, etc. You might be interested in checking out
this thread, during which I asked myself, “Where’s Mark when you need him!”