When Hillman discusses ideas, he mentions an "intimacy" between them and "visual metaphor." He says: "Ideas allow us to envision" (1975: 121). They also, I would add, allow him to "re-vision." The English word "idea" derives from the Greek word eidōs, which, Hillman notes, means "that which one sees" (not, he emphasizes, in an abstract sense but "in a concrete sense"), as well as "that by which one sees." (The verb eidō means "to see.") Ideas are both an end and a means to an end. Hillman says of ideas: "We see them, and by means of them." He says that "having ideas to see with and seeing ideas themselves" imply "that the more ideas we have, the more we see" (1975: 121). In this visual metaphor, to see is not to have "sights" but, as Hillman says, "psychological ideas, or insights" (1975: 122).

In contemporary English, perhaps the most common synonym for "idea" is "concept." For Hillman, however, ideas are not concepts. He likes ideas but dislikes concepts, for, to him, ideas are concrete and concepts are abstract. Among the many definitions of eidōs one definition is "image" - especially in the sense of "psychic image." For Hillman, "idea" retains that etymological sense, which he restores. In this sense, imagination is intrinsic to ideation. Hillman likes ideas to the extent that, unlike concepts, they are like images - concrete particularizations rather than abstract generalizations.

"I don't mean throw out all conceptual language," Hillman says, "but, generally speaking, conceptual language is where we're caught" (1983: 56-7). He notes that the language of dreams is not a language of concepts but a language of images. "The word in the dream is not restricted to conceptual interpretation because the word in the dream is not a concept," he says. "It's an image arriving out of the imagination" (1983: 57). Hillman says that "the dream speaks in images, or even is images" (1979: 55). When he criticizes interpretation, he criticizes a specific variety of interpretation, which I have called "conceptualization of the imagination" (Adams 2004: 49) - that is, interpretation that replaces concrete, particular images with abstract, general concepts. "Dreams call from the imagination to the imagination," Hillman says, "and can be answered only by the imagination" (1979: 55).

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he second Hillman is what I might call the "proliferation" Hillman. This is the Hillman for whom the image is a point of departure for more and more images - not just one image but many images. In contrast to the Hillman who experiences the image in a specific context, mood, and scene, this Hillman asks what the image is like. "The operative term is 'like,'" he says. "This is like that" (1977: 86). The result of this procedure is that images proliferate. There are many images, none of which Hillman privileges over any of the others.

Consider the actual qualities of the images in the specific context, mood, and scene of a dream that Hillman presents:

There is a black dog, with a long tail, that shows its teeth at me. I am terribly afraid. (1977: 86)

In this dream, what I call the "non-ego image" is a dog that is black with a tail that is long and with teeth that it shows at what I call the "ego-image," which is terribly afraid. The "precision" Hillman would presumably stick to these images just as the dream presents them, but that is not what Hillman does in this instance. Instead, the "proliferation" Hillman asks what the images are like:

We simply ask the dreamer, "What is this dog, this scene, this fear, like?" Then we get: It's like when there is sudden sound and I jump with fright; like coming to analysis and expecting you to pounce on everything I say; like anger - sometimes I get so angry (or hungry) that I could savage anyone who gets near me; like my ulcer gets angry and hungry at the same time; like my mother used to look - her teeth; like going home after work in the dark and being afraid my wife will bark at me, jump at me; it's like dying - I'm so afraid - it's so vicious and low and degrading; it's like a film I saw when I was little with black dogs in it and I had to leave the movie theater I was so terrified; like the Jackal God, Anubis; like Mephistopheles in Faust; like when I get sexy - I want to tear into the meat and just eat and screw like a dog in the street, anywhere; it's like the dog was a snake with a long tail. And so on. (1977: 86-7).