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.

Care of the soul, then, is a perspective, an orientation, a way of interacting with and understanding what the work of psychotherapy truly is, what the maladies of the client actually are (eg. Elkins, 1995; Jevremović, 2019; Moore, 1992; Tamas & Bolos, 2022).
 
What is Soul?
 
But what exactly do we mean, in the context of therapy, when we refer to the soul?
If you live a spiritual or religious life, or have a relationship with God, Creator, or a higher power, you might have a personal sense of what this means. You might come to this subject with your own answer to this question.
 
Or, you might be arriving without a clear picture, with a curiosity, or perhaps noticing a certain kind of echo inside yourself when you read the word “soul” that you’d like to listen into.  
 
If you fall into the latter category, you’ll still find yourself in good company when discussing matters of the soul in a counselling context. The psychotherapeutic literature on the topic does not share a consensus on what, exactly, the soul is—most writers on the subject concern themselves more with discussing the soul’s necessity, rather than narrowly defining or proving its existence. Thomas Moore (1992) suggests that the soul is impossible to define, precisely, because definition is an intellectual enterprise—the soul, meanwhile, “prefers to imagine” (p. xi). Often many coming to this topic arrive here following the threads of their own imaginative experience. Moore’s stance is that we know intuitively, not definitively, what soul is, and the overall lack of definition in the psychotherapeutic literature seems to support this idea.

In general, when we seek a definition of soul, we come across two main camps. The first is that the soul is the “spiritual” part of a person. The second is that the soul is the “essence” of a person, the essential animating or inspiring force, the life of the person (Foskett, 2001).

The first definition leads to a split between care disciplines. If the soul is understood as one part of a person that can be separated from other parts, as in, the spiritual part vs. the material parts, we get the Western medical model we currently have, in which the religious and spiritual sphere study and care for the soul part of a person, while the medical and psychiatric fields study and care for the body and mind parts of a person (Foskett, 2001).

Psychotherapeutic soul care aligns more with the later definition, in which a person’s soul is considered to be their very life, their essence, the whole of them (Foskett, 2001, p. 102). In this definition you cannot truly separate the soul from matters of the body, heart, and mind. An emphasis on caring for the soul, then, means caring for the very life of the person.

Many writers on psychotherapeutic soul care will also distinguish between spirit and soul in terms of spacial dimensionality—spirit points upwards, towards transcendence, heaven, etc., while soul is always to do with “going down” into the depths of experience. “Spirit is about height; soul is about depth” (Elkins, 1995, p. 85).

Psychotherapeutic Care of the Soul
 
While psychotherapeutic care of the soul shares many overlapping traits with spiritual or religious care of the soul, there are a few main themes that can help us engage with a specifically-therapeutic exploration.
 
Psychotherapeutic care of the soul is first and foremost a philosophical shift (Clarkson, 2021) towards an understanding of psychopathology as the suffering of the soul (eg. Elkins, 1995), and engaging in psychotherapy as the art of nurturing and healing the soul (eg, Brizzi, 2020).
 
This can present in therapy sessions in a few main ways:
 
Utilizing the power of authenticity, presence, the therapeutic relationship, and love (eg. Elkins, 1995; Hammer; 2019; Leijssen, 2008; Vasavada, 2019).
 
Adopting a care vs. cure attitude, a belief in the essence of the client, a movement from fixing towards loving (eg. Brizzi, 2020; Clarkson, 2021; O,Connor, 2021; Ottens & Klein, 2005).
 
Developing an ability to trust the process of counselling, to wait in the tension of the unknown long enough for that which we do not yet know we know to reveal itself (eg. Green, 2020; Leijssen, 2009; O’Connor, 2021; Moore, 2021).
 
Inviting the imagination into the counselling room as the language of the soul, as the bridge between the known and the unknown, as a powerful tool of personal inquiry (eg. Colman, 2009; Kochunas, 1997; Moore, 2021; Ottens & Klein, 2005),
 
Creating a deeper relationship with the body, as the house of the soul, and the felt sense as an experience of the soul (eg. Holifield, 2020; Leijssen, 2008, Quillman, 2020, Swinton, 2020).

References

​Brizzi, M. (2021). The Soul of Existential Therapy: Dialogues with Professors Todd DuBose and Miles Groth. Existential Analysis: Journal of the Society for Existential Analysis, 32(1), 159–163.
 
Brown, C. (2021) From career to calling: a depth psychology guide to soul-making work in darkening times. British Journal of Guidance & Counselling, 49(3), 508–509.
 
Cambridge university press and assessment. (n.d). Psychopathology. Cambridge Dictionary.  https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/psychopathology
 
Clarkson, B. (2021). Is it God Who Cures? A Transpersonal Perspective on Script Formation, the Role of Physis, and the “Soul Work” of the Therapeutic Process. Transactional Analysis Journal, 51(3), 317–330.
 
Colman, W. (2009). Response to Umberto Galimberti. Journal of Analytical Psychology, 54(1), 19–23.
 
Elkins, D. (1995). Psychotherapy and spirituality: Toward a theory of the soul. Journal of Humanistic Psychology 35(2), 78-98.
 
Foskett, J. (2001). Soul space: the pastoral care of people with major mental health problems. International Review of Psychiatry, 13(2), 101–109.
 
Green, D. (2020). Mortification meanderings: Contemplating “vulnerability with purpose” in arts therapy education. Arts in Psychotherapy, 68, n.p.
 
Hammer, D. (2019). Cultivating soulfulness in psychotherapy. Spirituality in Clinical Practice, 6(2), 139-143.
 
Holifield, B. (2020). Trauma, Soul, and the Body in Jungian Analysis. Jung Journal: Culture & Psyche, 14(4), 72–85.
 
Jevremović, P. (2019). Considering Life and Death in Psychoanalysis. American Journal of Psychoanalysis, 79(2), 196–211.
 
Kochunas, B. W. (1997). Preserving soul: Rescuing diversity in the managed care era. Counseling & Values, 42(1), 12.
 
Leijssen, M. (2008). Encountering the Sacred: Person-centered therapy as a spiritual practice. Person-Centered & Experiential Psychotherapies, 7(3), 218–225.
 
Leijssen, M. (2009). Psychotherapy as search and care for the soul. Person-Centered & Experiential Psychotherapies, 8(1), 18–32.
 
Moore, T. (1992). Care of the soul. HarperCollins.
 
Moore, T. (2021). Soul therapy. HarperCollins.
 
O’Connor, A. (2021). Moral Injury. Therapy Today, 32(2), 34–37.
 
Ottens, A. J., & Klein, J. F. (2005). Common factors: Where the soul of counseling and psychotherapy resides. Journal of Humanistic Counseling, Education & Development, 44(1), 32–45.
 
Quillman, T. (2020). Neuroscience and the therapist’s love for the patient: Intersubjective space, the embodied imagination, and transformation. Journal of Spirituality in Mental Health, 22(1), 1–29.
 
Swinton, J. (2018). Medicating the Soul: Why Medication Needs Stories. Christian Bioethics: Non-Ecumenical Studies in Medical Morality, 24(3), 302–318.
 
Tamaș, I., & Boloș, A. (2022). The role of religion and spiritual approach in the management of patients with mental disorders. Bulletin of Integrative Psychiatry, 4, 27–32.
 
Vasavada, A. (2019). Fee-Less Practice and Soul Work. Jung Journal: Culture & Psyche, 13(2), 82–89.