What is the Soul, and Why is it Relevant to Therapy?

Caring for the Soul in Counselling:
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What is the Soul, and Why is it Relevant to Therapy?

“The soul is a mysterious, deep, and powerful element that infuses all of the self and the whole of life. It is like an immaterial and invisible plasma coursing through every person and the entire universe. It can’t be seen on an x-ray, and yet for centuries people have spoken about the soul as a precious power that accounts for their identity and seems to extend beyond the self.”
- Thomas Moore

An Etymological History
 
These days, you might be surprised if your counsellor asks you about your soul. But this wasn’t always the case. In fact, the etymological roots of the profession of counselling therapy—words like psychology and psychotherapy—involve the soul. The very words that name this vocation “point to the soul”—the etymology of the word psyche is soul, and the etymology of the word therapist is servant or attendant, and thus etymologically a psychotherapist is a “servant or attendant of the soul” (Elkins, 1995, p. 78).
 
The word psychology, similarly, means the study of the soul (eg. Brown, 2021; Elkins, 1995; Hammer, 2019; Moore, 1992). And the word psychopathology—defined these days as “the study of mental illnesses” (Cambridge)— originally comes from the words ‘psyche’ and ‘pathos,’ which literally means “the suffering of the soul” (Elkins, 1995, p. 78).
 
What a difference in tone there is between the modern usage of these words and their etymological origins.

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