2. WHERE DID THE LOVE GO?

“At work, according to the most recent data, less than 16 percent of us are fully engaged, with the rest of us just selling our time and our talent and getting compensated for our trouble. In the worst extremes of always-on, high-stress jobs, such as distribution centers, emergency room nursing, and teaching, incidences of PTSD are higher than they are for veterans returning from war zones. Imagine that. We’ve created work conditions that are so blind to the needs of each human being that they wind up experiencing more soul-destroying distress than soldiers who’ve witnessed the killing and harming of other human beings.

I define therapy as “care of the soul.” In this sense therapy happens in all places all the time. And this is real therapy—caring, helpful, generous listening and responding.

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.

The therapist is seeing the situation differently, and that itself may be helpful. When therapist and client are not in the same narrative, there is space for change.

Jung said that every time you serve as a therapist, you always have to deal with your own issues. In Jung’s words (1966), “The doctor must change himself if he is to become capable of changing his patient. We have learned to place in the foreground the personality of the doctor as a curative or harmful factor; and that what is now demanded is his own transformation—the self-education of the educator” (p. 73).