You ask yourself: What is the underlying plot in my client’s story? What is the main emotion? Where is she trying to take me in understanding her? What is her preoccupation? The questions you ask yourself grow darker. How does she unconsciously interfere with the therapy? Is she leaving out important parts of the story? What is her bias? These questions make your listening suitably complex and sophisticated. A good listener is not just someone who hears everything but someone who hears what is not spoken or what has been suppressed or mangled. The therapist is a detective sometimes, knowing that the client, although wanting to be open and honest, won’t tell you the whole story. You don’t let this situation make you cynical. You can still love and admire your client. You simply know that human nature is complicated and the deep stories are slow to emerge. Resistance is not usually intentional but rather an expression of the neurosis.

My first rule of thumb is that therapy itself never ends. No closure. The client may find another therapist or another way to do therapy in the course of life. So I don’t make a big deal of ending. I don’t worry about closure. In fact, I’d rather end with au revoir than good-bye. Until the next time. I want to invite the client to keep thinking about doing therapy in some form. I have it in my mind and therefore in my words that therapy will definitely continue. I want to seed that idea at a time of ending: this is only a pause.

You remember that you’re not an ordinary person in this relationship. You are the therapist or a friend in a good position to help. It won’t hurt the relationship to wonder about her sincerity or honesty. As a therapist, you can expect a client to be dishonest. That’s material. It’s part of the complex you’re helping with. If your client is perfect, what is there to talk about? Therapy does not require full honesty. It would be better to hear the story with all its protective shields and misdirections than a tale cleaned up for therapeutic use. As a therapist you cannot be naïve. You have to expect shadow, expect to be manipulated. It’s all right. This is a basic human effort to risk telling a story by getting to the real facts slowly, one at a time. You can’t do it perfectly or purely. Only a moralistic therapist would expect unalloyed truth. A soulful therapist does not ask for purity but only a valiant effort to be present.

If you’re devoted to the soul and to your job as a caretaker of soul, you should not be tempted to stray from that role. It takes all of you to do that job, and you won’t want anything to interfere with it. When I was a monk, I lived a life of celibacy, and I have always believed that such a life was possible for me, even in my early twenties, because of the intensity of the community life I experienced daily. It’s similar in therapy. The deep and intimate joy of soul work does not leave room for any personal sexual or romantic needs. The work of intense care for souls keeps my heart busy and full.

If I am dealing with a particularly shaken person, I keep the boundaries strict and firm, but with most clients I make a point to be present as more than the therapist. I talk a little about, my life. If the client asks about how things are going for me, I tell him. I may bring up an experience of mine that seems apropos. I do all this thoughtfully and minimally, just enough to be present as a person. My purpose is to serve the soul of the person I want to help. I hold back my own needs for a different occasion.