In this respect, Jungian analyst James Hillman goes as far as holding psychotherapy responsible for the tawdriness of American politics since the 1950s. In his reckoning, all the smart people are sitting in therapy incapacitated, their therapists having convinved them that the source of their misery is to be found within themselves. The net result is a state of near oblivion as regards the political debacles that have unfolded around them for the last half-a-century.

When someone comes into my consulting room for therapy, I’m on the alert for signs of the soul’s condition. I will hear many stories and some complaints about life, but I see my job as caring for the deep and usually hidden life of the soul. This orientation is essential. You can’t do real psychotherapy without it. Often what is called therapy looks more like life management than soul care. You can rearrange your life, but that is not the same as giving your deep soul what it needs and craves.

Through his knowledge of mythology Jung was able to see meaning in the apparent gibberish of people being treated in a psychiatric hospital. He (1973) said that a story is more important than a diagnosis: “Clinical diagnoses are important, since they give the doctor a certain orientation, but they do not help the patient. The crucial thing is the story. For it alone shows the human background and the human suffering, and only at that point can the doctor’s therapy begin to operate” (p. 124). Diagnosis can take away the individuality and complexity of a client’s experience. It puts a client into a box. It serves the therapist more than the client. It can be demeaning. It places the therapist above the client. A diagnosis can be full of shadow, even if it might please the client to have a name for what he’s going through. That, too, is an illusion. Now we know how to treat the syndrome, and we don’t have to face it as a unique invitation to become an individual. The diagnosis puts you in a pen with other people who have given up their individuality, as well. Your story is individual. Remember Hillman’s warning to keep your images, your stories, exactly as they present themselves. Don’t adjust them so they fit into a box of syndromes and disorders. Each time you tell a story it is different—different nuances and tones. You call up a story from the past and you tell it in the present with the full impetus of who you are right now.

“Jung placed complexes at the heart of his psychology, describing a complex as a “splintered psyche” or as a fragment of the psyche, highly emotional and—the key quality—autonomous. A complex acts like a person inside you who can take possession of you and make you feel things you wish you did not feel. It can also give you a good picture of what is going on deep in the psyche. This is an important clue for therapy. Complexes are not things to get rid of directly. They are a doorway to the entire psyche, and so therapy pays close attention to them and respects them.

We are in psyche; psyche is not in us. The way we order and shape our world profoundly affects how our soul is either fed or starved in daily life.