Soul Therapy

Soul Therapy

“It takes good ideas and an open heart to do therapy well. You are the main instrument of the work, and you can never stop learning about how human beings operate and who you are. You become a therapist first through self-discovery and then by learning how human life in general works.

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.

In their training, therapists learn that common sense is not always useful in counseling others. Human life is full of paradoxes and contradictions.

“I had Plato in mind when, many years ago now, I wrote Care of the Soul. I thought of it as simple, daily concrete care for our essence, our depth, and the source of our humanity. If you care for your soul, you will be more human, able to relate better and find your way through life, discovering your purpose and calling. Care of the soul is not always about dealing directly with problems but solving them indirectly by discovering your deepest self and making a beautiful life.

Therefore, often the best healing of life and body is serious, positive attention to the needs of your soul.

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.

Education in the emotions and in life patterns is a major part of therapy. That is one reason why a therapist would benefit from a big perspective on life, one that does not reduce the soul to the brain or to mere behavior and chemicals. A good therapist is part philosopher and even part theologian, in a nonpartisan way, because the soul touches on the great unsolvable mysteries of life.

For the most part, therapy is a matter of telling stories and listening to stories. A therapist needs an acute ear because she has to hear the stories within and behind the stories told and reach so far in her hearing as to grasp the mythic tale, the one that only whispers in the background and yet expresses the essence of the story. Myth describes the basic human experience, the archetypal level, that undergirds the story of events in time. The client tells the stories of her life, but the therapist listens for the rumble of myth deep within the simple stories of life. Adventures of the soul are bigger in scope than the vignettes of ordinary days. They are captured in myths, fairy tales, and legends, not in personal stories, unless you probe these deeply enough to glimpse the myth. So I always look for the greater story within the simple, literal details of daily life. I listen beneath the surface for the great and ancient tale, the story of the soul. To do this kind of listening, it helps to know mythologies and fairy tales and folk stories. If I were establishing my own school of psychotherapy, I’d include classes on mythology and folk tales, the stories of the spiritual traditions, and even novels and short stories, all of which educate the imagination so that a therapist is ready to hear the deep rumblings of primal narratives within the telling of a personal experience. A therapist should be an expert in stories, one who not only listens well but also helps clients tell their stories vividly and meaningfully.

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.

“This is not casual curiosity, which is on my list of forbidden responses, but a loose thought, not entirely unrelated, but not logical.

A therapist has to be clever. She has to understand that something in people, usually not intended, wants to block the therapy. Therapists sometimes refer to this blockage as resistance, but that’s an ego word. It might be better to think archetypally. Could it be that the client has a long-standing fear about facing some past event or relationship? Or maybe the client is simply a private person who does not like to say much about herself. Later, we’ll consider the myth of Daphne and appreciate that people have an inherent need, which is not neurotic resistance, to protect their privacy and integrity. Their omissions may not be resistance but reluctance.

This contrariness is one of the tools I use regularly. I not only consider an opposite position on stories and their interpretations, I usually present my contrary view. My clients are so used to me offering an alternative to their well-reasoned explanations that after they finish telling me what they think, they wait expectantly for me to contradict them. I do this somewhat in a spirit of fun and openness, even though the matter may be deadly serious. I’m not criticizing my clients; I’m playfully giving them my accustomed and often cherished alternative version.

You can invite your clients to tell a story more than once, maybe many times. Give permission for the repetition. People often feel embarrassed telling the same story again and again. Maybe something was omitted in the first telling. Or the next time the story may have certain changes and additions, a different emphasis, or an alternative ending. It is possible that something has been held back, and now it’s time to come clean. On the other hand, the story may simply need repetition so it can be heard and valued better. Repeated tellings in themselves give a story added power and sometimes a bit of ritual.

“Hermes represents the power to use language and images skillfully, to probe multiple levels of meaning, and to value surprise and synchronicity. A Hermes-inspired therapist or helping friend looks for unexpected discoveries and revelations. He is on the sidelines and between the cracks. He spots hardly noticeable remarks and gestures and pays attention to style as well as substance. He has a special eye for shadow qualities, and can sympathize with them, and knows that he can’t hide behind his professionalism and satisfied life or the healthy image his clients project onto him.

The Hermes-type therapist, said Rafael López-Pedraza, one of the founders of archetypal psychology, does not hide in his dignity but gets down into the muck of human struggle and ignorance. A therapist inspired by Hermes is not above his patient, healthy and knowing, but is in touch with his own human frailty. He does not use his rational mind as much as his empathic heart and pays attention to physical details that a more conventional therapist might overlook. He is also sometimes crafty and subtle and not always straightforward.

Another scholar of Greek myth, Karl Kerényi, made a remark in one of his books that helps me understand myth. He was discussing the goddess Artemis and noted that she is the atmosphere you sense when you are deep in nature. Think about going on a hike, moving farther and farther from the civilized world. You sense a pristine purity. That sensation is the essence of the mythic goddess Artemis. You have met her and been close to her. Now when you read about her or imagine her to be at work in you, you know with your senses who she is, and in a way who you are. She is that smell of fresh air, that unspoiled look of nature, and the special feeling of not being in the busy and noisy world or with other people. She is that whole realm of natural purity working through you. She is your natural self, or better, the spirit exuding your natural being.

She needed Richard in her personal mythic development, but she did not necessarily need Richard the person.

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.

“Often a person who is obviously weak and pushed around is actually quite forceful in ways that are not obvious.

Here is someone who needs to learn better how to let others have some power and influence over her without her feeling too dependent.

If the symptom is dependency, we help the person become effectively vulnerable.

The symptom of being too dependent becomes the virtue of being appropriately vulnerable and open to influence. Anger becomes personal power. Jealousy becomes a capacity for intimacy and interdependency.

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.

The client, of course, thinks that the opposite place is glorious, the solution, happiness. The woman who thinks she is too weak would like desperately to be strong and powerful. But in fact she is already forceful, only her power is not effective and is hidden to her eyes. She does not know she is so controlling and full of muscle in her relationships. But if you were to talk to her friends, you would probably hear many stories about her annoying power issues and tendency to control. People who identify as being passive are often hyperactive and strong-willed.

The early stories, remember, don’t have to be heard as literal history but as narratives at work in her life today. Going back is really going deep.

An ignorant person is always doing something, and yet much is left undone.

“Notice that it is not the shifting of family members to a current person, but rather archaic fantasies that were once focused on the family are now wakened in present circumstances. Transference is rooted in the tendency of the psyche to produce images and narratives at all times. It is especially active in the intimacy of a therapeutic encounter.

I mentioned before that emotions can be contagious. If you are the helper and there is a transference from the past onto you, you are in danger of getting caught up in it and playing your role unconsciously in that narrative— countertransference. You may find yourself in the middle of a highly emotional drama and not aware of what is taking place. You don’t realize that your client has found a doctor or an uncle in you. I remember a client telling me that I reminded her of a former boyfriend who, like me, was interested in art and music and spirituality. That’s all it took for a transference to form. If I had unconsciously felt her interest in me through her old boyfriend, I might have developed a countertransference, an added layer of interest due to the eros flowing between us. That could be a useful complication, but it could also cause trouble. In this case I kept my wits about me and cautiously used the frisson of the boyfriend to keep the therapy warm and deep. A therapist always needs a seat in the back row, where she can watch the drama as it unfolds. She should have the skill to observe several levels playing out at once. At the same time, she has to play her part in the action. She has to be involved with a heightened level of awareness. It is particularly dangerous to get caught in a transference/countertransference because you may intensify the narrative that is causing the person so much pain, and, of course, in that state you can hardly find your way out to clarity and freedom.

“Serenity is not the suppression of conflict or emotion but the achievement of calm through a big enough vision of life that troubles don’t take it away, especially in those moments when you need it. Know the difference between the inclination to react unconsciously and the ability to maintain a greater vision that is ready to go into action in a split second. Another word for professional serenity would be neutrality.

All this complexity and all the signifying layers don’t have to be a problem. They account for life’s richness. The trouble is, we are usually under the illusion that the world we encounter is a factual one having only one layer we call reality. If you follow the archetypal, essentially Platonic view, there is no reality, absolutely none, that is not colored every day by the living imagination. The therapist does not have the luxury to live and work under the illusion things are as they appear to be.

I recommend that you remain neutral. “Neutrality and patience” is my mantra. Don’t lose your equilibrium in some powerful attraction or repulsion. Don’t be too available or too remote. Don’t be either defended or eager. Use neutral language and gestures. Don’t defend against temptation, just don’t be available to it.

The British poet William Blake said that he was not the author but only the secretary. The authors are in eternity.

If the therapist cultivates a life of serenity and neutrality, she stands a chance against the wild beasts that are let loose in a psyche that has not yet found its fenced pasture. In medieval Europe stories were told of the unicorn, a beautiful animal that could cause widespread damage and yet was the very symbol of health. The image of the unicorn at its most useful showed him in a small pasture surrounded by a wooden fence. The psyche needs some containment, a fence or a vessel, to keep its wildness contained.

“In some ways therapy is an artificial conversation. I don’t mean that in a negative way. I mean that you talk as though you were in a drama, where every word counts. You must understand that as therapist you have considerable power. The words you use are not the usual ones. They may be the same dictionary words, but in context they have an elevated standing. You must take care with them, because they can have more force than you intend and can either help or harm.

Words are never just terms from a dictionary. They are more like packaged time bombs ready to explode at the right moment. This power can be a positive resource or it can ruin everything. The main thing is to respect words and use them artfully. Understand that words don’t always do what you want them to do. To an extent, they have a life of their own. If you are careless with words and use powerful ones without thinking, you risk breaking part of whatever vessel you have been building. Words are like the two-by-fours or concrete blocks that form a wall and a structure. I am careful even with words of greeting and good-bye. You can ruin an hour of work by saying something like, “I hope we do better next time.” That’s a heavy judgment for a client or friend to carry for a week or so.

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.

Therapy is like that: you think it’s over, but there is always the chance of another beginning. I like my therapy conclusions all to be cadences that clearly feel like endings and yet are not final. Let’s be happy about life going on. Therapy is eternal and takes many forms. Remember the glass vessel, and be gentle with your good-byes.

“In that sense a therapist or good friend listens to another to find out who she is, what is special about her. In this kind of listening you not only take in someone’s words but also discover who they are.

I want to hear those voices, too, when I listen to a client narrate a life story or a recent troubling episode. I want to hear the voices of the inner critic and the influential parents, the voices of conscience and inspiration. I want to hear the mythic narrative that hums in the background of more immediate tales of woe.

That means it is not just two conscious people talking. It is two people with complicated histories and highly tiered emotional backgrounds trying to be clear about matters that are essentially thick and cloudy. Your emotional memories might get triggered several times in the course of a single conversation. You know intuitively that you should not act on those triggers, or react. But it is not easy to keep your cool when one bullet of stimulus after another hits you where it hurts.

Pedraza suggested that the therapist in this case be in touch with his own freakishness and then stay in tune with the patient’s way of speaking, echoing it if possible. The idea is to enter into whatever complex has gotten hold of the patient through his style of language, his rhetoric.

I don’t veer off in my own preferred direction but rather stay observantly with the rambling and listen closely for any quiet indications of what the person is really trying to say. I have come to understand that rambling rhetoric is valid. It is the best way my client has to express her experiences. Here and there I interject an insightful remark based on what I am hearing, which comes through like a peal of thunder. Occasionally a client, breathless from the meaningless narration, will say, “I wish you would say something enlightening.

A therapist never acts or speaks without art. You can never be completely natural, which is to say, unconscious. You are an artist of the psyche. You don’t set the tone, you let your client do that, because in that tone may be a way deeper into the problem and therefore out of it.

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.

“One way not to get into the state of nirvana is to become absorbed in the culture. The cycle of births and deaths that describes samsara, what nirvana saves you from, is the meaningless, thoughtless, standard life: unconscious consumption of material things, assumption of thoughtless values, diminished appreciation of intelligence and wisdom, the pursuit of mere entertainment instead of pleasure, disregard of meaning and purpose, the avoidance of fate and community. Nirvana is withdrawal from this mindless and immature escape from honest living.

A familiar Zen story tells of the teacher filling the student’s cup with an overflowing amount of tea, a lesson about having some emptiness, some space for developments, some stuckness in our feverish activity.

“This is a key idea: “memories” from childhood are not vestiges from the actual past but images coloring the present. They are not history but filters for seeing certain aspects of what is going on now.

The child is a living image, in and of the present, not only a historical fact. I emphasize the imaginal child because ordinarily we assume that talk about childhood is personal history.

In general, Hillman defined memory as a form of imagination. As you remember what life was like as a child, you are reimagining your past life and returning to a child’s way of seeing the world. The child is always present but comes to the surface at the appropriate times.

Our therapy took the form of the alchemical solutio, the breaking up of a tightly wrapped image of a life into its parts. Getting cracks in her story was a partial solution, at least, of her problem.

A passage from the poet Wallace Stevens (1989) has guided me for many years in my understanding of both religion and depth psychology: “The final belief is to believe in a fiction, which you know to be a fiction, there being nothing else. The exquisite truth is to know that it is a fiction and that you believe in it willingly” (p. 189). These words are not as radical as they may sound at first. You just have to accept that everything we say is colored by the limits of our understanding, our emotional biases, and our hopes and wishes. Imagination shapes everything we say and think. Whenever we tell the stories of our lives, we are all novelists. In his book Healing Fiction, Hillman (1983) went further. He said that therapy offers the opportunity to opt into a better fiction, tell a more advanced story about your life.

This is a key for therapists and for friends guiding friends: Try to get to a more sophisticated story about your client’s or friend’s life. Aim for less obvious blame and for more compassion toward parents and other major figures. Learn that life is always more complicated and subtle than you have usually imagined it. Revise your stories, make them more mature and precise, and clear them of strong childish emotions.

You can also help your serious adult become friends with the playful child by actually playing more games and being physically carefree in adult situations. In a split like this, the two sides can each give something to the other. You could more often be playfully serious and seriously playful. Or you could work hard for a few hours and then play with abandon. There are many ways to keep child and adult on good terms with each other.

When you’re talking to a child, you are an adult. There is a natural distance between you. Remember that speaking to children is an art and should not ever be a spontaneous, unconscious act. If you forget they are children, you will likely treat them from your unconsciousness. Listen to an adult trying to correct a misbehaving child. What is that tone? It is not normal or human. It is a complex rooted in the split archetype of parent and child. When you are with children, you may have to make a conscious decision not to speak from a parent complex.

“I don’t have many theories or methods, though I have been strongly affected by Hillman’s (1979) book The Dream and the Underworld, in which he recommended that we enter deeply into a dream and be affected by it, rather than translate the dream into the terms and concepts of waking life.

I keep the focus on the dream images and point out when the response is too symbolic and explanatory. I ask for reflections, not interpretations. The conversation is not headed for a conclusion but always hovers over the dream. Whether individually or in a group the essential thing is to stop using your hyperactive intelligence to pin the dream down. You have to be receptive, wait for the dream to show you its meaning, put some reins on that demanding intellectual ego of yours. Be more relaxed. Let the dream give you thoughts. Don’t force it into the open. It’s a special skill to allow thoughts to arise into awareness instead of forcing them through mental exertion.

“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.

As always, the purpose is not to defeat the complex but to slowly transform it into a valuable quality. In the case of jealousy, the good part might be effective dependency that does not hurt you. But it could take a long time to transform raw jealousy into gracious vulnerability. And the complex may never go away completely but rather remain as a source of further deepening. A young man recently told me about his helping complex. He lives in San Francisco and walks the streets almost every day. If he has money in his pocket, he can’t help giving it all away to people on the street begging. Sometimes, to avoid the problem, he does not bring money with him. The man has a helping complex that arrives when he encounters someone in need. He can’t not help, even though he’s giving away money he needs. This complex is especially difficult because his action looks like a good deed. As is always the case, a therapist has to be careful not to get caught in the apparent virtuousness of the behavior. Is it not always good to give money to the poor? What should his therapist do? Don’t tell the man he has to take care of himself and ignore people who want money from him. Trying to will the complex away only makes matters worse. Suppressing the complex often looks benign, but it’s really a heroic attack on this fragment of psyche. Anyway, plain willpower is no match for it. A complex may have roots that dig deep into the psyche. You can’t just extract it. Instead, you could see this “problem” as an opportunity for this man’s life to expand. You might ask him to tell you in detail what happens when he feels compelled to give away his money. Just to describe the problem in general terms is not enough. You need a narrative, images, details. When you hear the full story, you may notice certain subthemes worth pointing out and discussing. The clue to a complex may be something small and easily overlooked. That’s why you have to be sharp and catch tiny clues hidden to an ordinary eye. Suppose you were to ask this man what happens when a street person approaches him. He says, “I feel like I’m privileged and don’t deserve to have money in my pocket.” You ask where that idea came from. “From the nuns at school. They taught me that it’s good to be poor and bad to have money.” You say, “But you don’t have much money.” “It makes no difference. Compared to the man on the street, I’m wealthy.” So here we have material for conversation, and the therapist can take this material deeper by deftly steering the discussion. For one thing, childhood is in play. He mentioned the nuns at school. And we just discussed the child archetype in some depth. Maybe this man has to develop a more adult attitude toward money and replace his childhood story with a more mature one. Religion also plays a role with its moral demands. They can last a lifetime. He may also need some spiritual maturing, an assessment of values he picked up from nuns when he was a child. This could be a project in itself. So we have rich material for opening up this person’s money complex and his need to help. There is no single-statement solution, but the narratives that could emerge, added to a dream or two, should be enough to make progress with the symptom. A complex does not puff up and blow away, it unravels, showing what is inside it and giving you material to work with.

Suffering is not an illness; it is the normal counterpole to happiness. A complex becomes pathological only when we think we have not got it

You can render it more human and able to fit into the whole of your life.

Sometimes a complex that shows itself as a personality problem is resolved into a spiritual dedication much greater in scope. The solution is the enlargement and perfecting of a small personal issue into a serious contribution to society.

13. HOW INVOLVED SHOULD YOU BE?

“Once again let me evoke Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of sexuality, sensuality, the beauty of nature, and especially the sea, gardens, and coupling. The spirit this mythological goddess embodies is fully present today in all these areas. You can certainly sense the special atmosphere when you step into a lush summer garden or find yourself in the presence of an extremely attractive person. That atmosphere, experienced both inner and outer, is what the Greeks tried to capture in their stories, rituals, and images of Aphrodite, and we can still feel her presence, even if typically we don’t use her name or engage in her formal rituals. One of the great problems of our time is neglect of this particular goddess. Interestingly, the Greeks often warned that if you neglect any deity, but especially this one, she will seek her revenge and set things right. The way Aphrodite responds to neglect is to cause intense and often problematic desire for love and romance.

Even if you are paid for your service, it is an act of generosity. The main instrument of your work is your own self.

I prefer to think of a therapist as sometimes being both intensely engaged and sometimes, maybe most of the time, standing back far enough to see what is happening.

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 you are a therapist, you can’t see the planet suffering from pollution and do nothing.

Therefore, I don’t merely advocate therapy for the world but also therapy in the world.

Morris, who was certainly a therapist for the world, wrote: “Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.

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.

Caring for the soul of the world means first making things with an acute ethical sensitivity, making them to function well and to be beautiful, using the heart and the imagination at full throttle, and giving them as much individuality as possible. These qualities are all aspects of soul. We might also create objects that we can relate to easily and even love. Steve Jobs, founder of Apple Computer, said, “When you’re a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you’re not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will see it.

“If there are problems at work, they will likely bleed over into other areas of life. I have a client who is married to a doctor. Actually, she’s married to his work, because that is where he gives most of his time and attention. Work is the third party in this marriage, or, more accurately, the doctor’s wife is the third factor that often interferes with his real marriage to medicine. In your jobs and career you “work” out the raw material of your existence.

If I were going to help a company become more psychologically sophisticated, here are a few of the many issues I’d focus on:

1. Understand that abusive controlling leaders are usually secretly insecure and weak. If you don’t perceive this contradiction, your way of dealing with them may be ineffective.

1. Jealousy and envy are to be expected in hierarchical organizations. They are raw expressions of more basic desires. You may have to be patient with these symptoms. Don’t just try to get rid of them but help them ripen into more positive energies.

1. A person in authority may not deal with their position well because of bad experiences in the family and in childhood. You may need some empathic, deep discussions before you can work out solutions with them.

1. People tend to develop hostile feelings toward each other when they don’t have opportunities to really get acquainted. It’s too easy then to direct stray negative fantasies at fellow workers.

1. Conviviality can give the soul the security and deep satisfaction it craves. Gatherings where people can truly enjoy one another and daily breaks in a convivial atmosphere could help, not hurt, productivity.

1. Being critical and vocal about fellow workers may stem from insecurity, an overwhelming need to keep the job, or habits learned at home. A few lessons in dealing with insecurity would go a long way.

1. A business can’t provide deep therapy for all its workers, but it can create a work environment that is not emotionally toxic. A sensitive style of leadership especially can help create real community, which can tone down the negativity.

1. Therapy always begins with listening. Any business could create a structure in which just listening to workers’ issues could help with morale.

1. The physical environment can also soothe the soul: fresh air, plants and trees, water, a place to walk, a comfortable workstation, well-selected colors. Therapy often involves physical details; it is not just a mental activity.

1. Images affect the soul deeply. You can devote attention to the art images in the workplace or to any aspect of the place seen as an image. How do you feel in a medical center, waiting for your doctor, in a small room with no windows and perhaps plastic images of blocked arteries or diseased organs? Even a small degree of awareness could make the image environment supportive rather than destructive.

Any workplace is a human community, what the Greeks called “polis,” a political group.”,

A human workspace, like all soulful endeavors, is based on the principle of friendship and so fosters friendship among workers, as well as an atmosphere of friendliness, an important cousin to friendship. Friendship is one of the main signs that soul is present, and yet some business owners and managers worry that friendship will slow production. Many workers feel inspired to do their work well because of the friends they have on the job.

I would offer them a checklist:

1. Listen closely.

1. Give advice cautiously.

1. Feed back what you hear at a deeper level.

1. Affirm the person.

1. Help deepen the story.

Of course you don’t want to confuse this capacity with professional therapy, but you can offer your care and help with some sophistication and intelligence. It would make sense to have a professional therapist visit a company and teach managers and maybe all employees how to talk to each other effectively. It is not only true that some things have to be taught but also that many things we assume don’t have to be taught do. We need some instruction on how to speak to each other in ways that help rather than hurt.

It would not take much to bring soul to our society simply by being reminded of the importance of our work.

16. HEALING SOCIETIE’S SOUL

“A society is like a person. It has a special history, certain inclinations, fears, hopes, and habits. A culture can get depressed and harbor old angers. A society has a personal history that needs sorting and clearing out, and it can always use some good therapy.

Therapy does not have to take the form of conversation. It may involve painting a house, building good transportation, inviting fresh and useful businesses to a region. In the little New England town where I live there is a small group of businesspeople who are concerned about the future of the region and do everything they can to provide attractive buildings and a good economy for all. They work hard to keep the international chain stores at a distance from the town center, so that they don’t quash local initiatives. They bury cables and raise money for improvements. They keep up the beautiful old buildings and demand strict codes for new ones. They are the town’s therapists, and they take their calling seriously. I talk to these people, who have skills that I lack. I encourage them and try to give them some philosophical underpinning for their good work. I’m their therapist.

I wish I could send them an old, yellowing copy of one of Carl Rogers’s basic books. Haven’t we learned yet in medicine and psychology that the person counts and deserves our full attention?

The root problem in society is an astounding degree of unconsciousness in dealings among people. Many act and speak from their deep needs, long- standing neurotic patterns and fears—with little or no awareness. You see this in shouting matches in which people hear nothing of what the other has to say. A community thrives on a spirit of cooperation and empathy, but often what you see is pure narcissism, self-interest, and gross immaturity.

We need a revolution in how society thinks of itself, a means of becoming more mature and thoughtful about social interaction.

We are back at Rule Number One: some things have to be taught. You can’t expect an average person to know the rules of effective engagement with others.

Rule Number Two: some things have to be healed. When people gather, there are many emotional wounds caught up in the discussion of social issues. You can see the pain on people’s faces as they desperately argue on behalf of their own needs and beliefs. It’s difficult to sustain a creative and happy society when the need for therapy is so strong and when little therapy is being offered.

His role and purpose was not only to liberate Black people but to free all citizens from emotional blockage to community. In his stirring and famous “I Have a Dream” speech, he said: “Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. . . . Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.” That “soul force” is the power of psyche, and Dr. King was doing soul therapy.

“Children see events through hypersensitive eyes and have their own magnified impressions about the world. They often explode in joy, but their happiness offsets deep fears and dreads. Their pain can be so devastating as to upset their very souls. In this bigger-than-life arena, parents are figures of myth, literally.

The care of a child’s soul requires restraint and close observation. You have to see how the child finds ways to allow her essence to manifest. A parent’s job as soul educator is to “lead out” the child’s soul into actual life, and this will give rise to a unique individual. Educere, one Latin root of education, means “to lead out.” The other, educare, means “to raise and teach.” If you’re really doing education, you don’t put things into the child, you lead out what is already there and is uniquely the child’s. You can’t expect the child to be like other children or indeed like you.

If you wish to grasp a particular child’s soul for care, notice what he or she fears or finds joy in. Individual sensitivity is a key sign of soul. Look at the people she befriends, since friendship is a key element in a soulful life. What does he do when he plays? Play is like dreaming, a world within a world that the soul likes to inhabit or visit. Surely, you will see signs of a future career or lifestyle in a young child. You can nurture that seedling without pressure or demand. The soul does not respond well to force. It wants room to expand and blossom, and it needs understanding and support.

You have to see through their outbursts to the drama being played out. They are not disobeying you personally, they are freeing themselves from the archetypal mother and father. Believe it or not, you are not the object of their anger, even if they think so and lead you to believe it. They need to be free of any form of overbearing and limited version of Father and Mother. They need to grow up and ease out of the family circle and move into a larger world where they will find new avatars for the archetypal parents. If you can be therapeutic rather than reactively personal, you can help the child mature. Yes, it takes some stamina from you, but that’s a small price for the deep satisfaction of being an effective parent. Besides, the situation could help you grow up, too, so you won’t be expecting others to obey you and honor your every word. You, too, need to be free of the weighty archetypes of Father and Mother. You need to grow out and escape from a limited, heavy, suffocating role.

“The “love” in “falling in love” sometimes proves to be a huge inflation, so that when the exalted fantasies diminish, the people involved feel disillusioned. That’s a good word, because indeed they have lost their delicious illusion that was perhaps sweeter than the possibility of a real relationship. But I don’t use the word illusion negatively. We need our passing spells and visits to wonderland. They may put us to sleep at one level, but at another they take us into new possibilities and keep us there, charmed, until new life can take hold.

Normally we don’t consider the “mania,” as Plato called it, of love sufficiently dangerous to require therapy. But any escapes from reality would benefit from a degree of self-awareness. The love state is not a good place for making decisions. This kind of love fogs the mind and inspires irrational behavior. When it turns dark, especially, as in serious jealousy, it can be truly dangerous.

My own view is that marriage is a vessel in which we can explore life with a companion. Happiness is not the goal as much as vitality, to be saved from a dull existence. This is not the ordinary wish to have a perfect life—a luxurious home, a good job, and successful children—but a profound and essential urge from the very root of our being to become somebody. At the wedding, most people don’t know what they are looking for. Their emotions have a great deal of energy but not much content or direction.

When I have done couples therapy in the past, on occasion I asked one partner to sit in a chair off to the side while I worked with the dreams and life stories of the other. My idea was that the people did not really know each other. Maybe by listening to each other and exploring their psyches they might have more empathy and a deeper appreciation for what the other was dealing with. As couples share their lives, they may come to think that they really know the other well. But that kind of intimacy can be misleading. Familiarity is not knowledge, and, in fact, it may be a block to really knowing the partner as a separate person. Some distance is necessary, hence my practice of attending to one person at a time. I encourage the one partner to be a close observer, perhaps gaining some empathy for the other. By listening to the soul I mean hearing the story that can’t be told.

But the struggle to become a person and to have a genuine relationship can hold people together, perhaps more effectively than a desire for happiness and unbroken togetherness. I’m not saying that a relationship should be painful but that the happiness sought for might be deep and complex, not superficial and simplistic. Therapists who aim at simple happiness for a couple in their care may either feel frustrated eventually or misguide the couple toward an ideal of superficial togetherness.

There is a kind of happiness in a relationship that does not require constant peace. Disagreements and frustrations don’t have to negate happiness but can give it the shadow necessary to be real and lasting. If a therapist feels she has to help the couple create constant calm, she may be contributing to the problem. She needs a philosophy of relationship that is suitably complicated and cognizant of the shadow.

It may be important not to accept the stories and points of view presented in therapy but to be always on the alert for alternative explanations. Almost always, after a long and passionate tale of woe and desperation, full of explanations and the assignment of blame, I offer an alternative point of view.

19. A THERAPIST’S SELF CARE

“The main tool in therapy is the person of the therapist. You have to boldly enter the emotional field of a troubled person or a conflicted couple and use everything you have to help them sort out their lives. Ideas and techniques help, but they are for the most part in the background. The therapist has to use himself, at some risk, to care for the other’s suffering. If anyone needs care of his own soul, it is a therapist. This is also true of the informal “therapist,” the friend counseling a friend, a coworker helping another make a big decision.

You not only have to know your limits, but also if you want to be a good therapist, you may have to expand your tolerance. You may have to stretch yourself to be available to more people.

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).

With these exercises of the imagination you are expanding and deepening the sources of your pleasure.

A therapist might have to relax in ways that have more substance than the mindless escapes people often use. When I suggest good movies and books and the study of art history, I am putting together the pleasure of images and the weight of real study. Of course there is time for ultramindlessness, but in general a therapist who is always “on” needs pleasures that themselves are deep and character building.

I find the books by Timothy Gallwey on the inner games of tennis and golf insightful. Games are full of metaphors that indicate how serious they can be if played with a deeper mind-set than usual.

Read Henry David Thoreau (2013) on sauntering. He offers lessons in how to walk with your soul.

A continuing practice of reading good therapists is an immeasurably useful way of gaining confidence in your work. For this book I read Jung, Hillman, Winnicott, Laing, Rogers, and Yalom. I restore my skills by consulting books and videos by Rollo May, Fritz Perls, John Tarrant, Ronald Schenk, Robert Sardello, D. W. Winnicott, Rafael López-Pedraza, Patricia Berry, David L. Miller, John Moriarty, and Nor Hall. I keep certain spiritual books at hand: Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, Tao Te Ching, Black Elk Speaks, Upanishads, Sufi poetry, Jane Hirshfield’s Women in Praise of the Sacred, and my own translation of the gospels. This is a partial list. I could add many poets and writers of fiction.

It also helps to have a big vision of your work. You can raise humanity up to a new level of ethical sensitivity. You can help people become more self-contained and purposeful. You can assist people so that they won’t be acting out so much in their everyday lives. You can find the roots of rage and anger and ease jealousies. You could find ways to make your understandings more public and therefore socially therapeutic. You could see yourself, without egotism, as a therapist for the world.

“You have developed a skill for immediately going deeper and hearing the metaphors. Where others may see facts, you see images, a bigger story and figures that are not personal and human. You feel the presence of the spirits and deities described in spiritual literature. They are not just symbols, nor do they represent parts of the self. They have their own reality in an imaginal realm, not a literal one. You are in tune with that realm. You can live in the dreamworld even in daytime.

You show your ordinary self, while at the same time creating and sustaining the vessel of therapy. You are both ordinary and skilled.

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.

From the first moment, I’m aware that therapy is a space separate from ordinary conversation. I listen more acutely than usual. I’m tuned in to levels of communication. I listen for the appearance and sound of the soul rather than the intended communication of my client. I hear overtones and reverberations. It’s not like listening at ordinary times in life. It’s not just focused listening, it’s listening for past voices and spirits and angels, to speak metaphorically.

Therapy is not all focused analysis. Once in a while I reach up to my bookshelf and read a quote or a poem that is relevant to what is being discussed. I may do this because I feel a constriction in our conversation. I feel we need a third voice to join us and allow us to look out further from our restricted space. It also models and teaches how good art and literature can be psychologically useful.

My main rule is to love my client’s soul. That is not romantic love, because it’s not so personal. You see the seeds of what this person could be. You glimpse the tragic events she had to go through, and you feel with her. You sense the promise and the possibilities. Your love of her soul is so intense, the very fulfillment of your vocation, that other kinds of love— romance, sexuality, personal intimacy—do not get in the way. The love of soul is too big and powerful.