Soul Therapy

The Art and Craft of Caring Conversations

Thomas Moore

• Publisher: HarperOne
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9780063071445
• eBook ISBN: 9780063071452
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Mental Health in Psychology

The New York Times bestselling author of the classic The Care of the Soul addresses the needs of those providing soul care to others—therapists, psychiatrists, ministers, spiritual directors, teachers, and even friends—sharing his insights for incorporating a spiritual or soulful dimension into their work and practices.

Soul Therapy is the culmination of Thomas Moore’s work. In his previous acclaimed books, he explored the soul in important areas of our lives—work, sex, marriage, family, religion, and aging. In this wise guide, he now returns to his core vocation: teaching practitioners—therapists, psychiatrists, ministers, spiritual directors, and others—how to offer soul care to those they assist.

A training manual infused with a lifetime’s worth of wisdom, Soul Therapy is divided into five sections: 

1. What therapy or “soul care” is and how it works;
2. What soul work is required of the helper to be able to address the needs of others;
3. How to access and move forward the spiritual dimension;
4. How to apply this work to specific areas, such as work, marriage, parenting, or teaching;
5. How to deal with other issues that arise, such as developing a therapeutic style, dealing with one’s shadow, and the need for self-care. 

Profound yet practical, enlightened yet grounded in real-world experience, Soul Therapy will become a definitive resource for caregivers and practitioners for years to come. 

Part 1

The Material

When you get to be older, and the concerns of the day have all been attended to, and you turn to the inner life—well, if you don’t know where it is or what it is, you’ll be sorry.

—Joseph Campbell (1988, p. 3)

Transforming events into a narrative provides a theme, direction, emotion, and insight. Therapy wants to achieve a story and to use stories from life. Add dreams and you have the material you need to glimpse the soul and begin therapy of the psyche, or psychotherapy.

Chapter 1

Therapy as Care

There is an old story about an elephant and a dog who were great friends. The dog would curl up on the end of the elephant’s trunk and sleep, and then sometimes the elephant would let the dog climb up on his back and ride to places the dog himself could not get to.

One day a man came along and saw the happy dog, offered the dog’s owner a large sum of money, and took him away. Immediately the elephant went into a deep funk and would not eat. He lost weight and began to look ill. His trainer got worried and called in a vet, who told him the elephant was in perfect health but seemed lonely.

The trainer knew about the odd friendship of the elephant and dog and made inquiries about the dog’s new owner. After extensive investigating, he found the owner, paid the man what he wanted, and returned the dog to the elephant, who seemed overjoyed. The big animal placed the dog on his head and appeared to do a dance, as only elephants can do. After that he began to eat again and regained his health.

This is a story about therapy. As I tell it, the dog is the elephant’s therapist, and all he has to do to keep the elephant from being depressed is be himself and enjoy his friend. That in itself is a good lesson for therapists. I could have told the story from the point of view of the dog. He was probably also sad and not so healthy in the home of a new owner and apart from his friend. So their friendship is mutual therapy, one keeping the other healthy. Later we’ll explore how a therapist benefits from doing therapy and how friendship is the most important means of bringing soul to life.

The Meaning of Therapy

Therapy is not a new invention. The Greek philosopher Plato, who lived twenty-three hundred years ago, defined therapy as “service” and used the word therapeia many times in his writings. You also find the word used forty-seven times in the New Testament, often translated into English as “heal.” The older meanings, “serve” or “care for,” would probably be more accurate. In Plato’s dialogue Euthyphro, the student asks Socrates, Plato’s alter ego, the meaning of “therapy.” Socrates compares therapy to a farmer taking care of his horse. A farmer, of course, feeds the horse, gives it water, brushes it down, cleans its stable, and lets it out for exercise. This daily, simple, ordinary care is the basic meaning of the word therapy. Psychotherapy is psyche-therapy, care of the soul in daily life. We tend the soul with as much solicitude, daily attention, and love as a farmer takes care of his horse.

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.

People often think of therapy as figuring themselves out and trying to get it right. The older meaning is more concrete and ordinary. You take care of your home, your family, your animals, do work that satisfies you, play often, and spend time with friends. In the older sense, this is what therapy is about, and so it would be good for both the professional and amateur to be less analytical and more observant.

As we will see later in the book, soul care is also care for the world—other people, society, and even the things that are part of daily life. You can’t very well live a soulful life in a soulless world. Sometimes, of course, when the world is in bad shape you have to do your best, but then you focus on your small world, giving it soul, and on making the greater world a place that is emotionally healthy and capable of loving connections.

The Beauty of Imperfection

Psychotherapy does not always aim at improving a person’s situation or solving a problem. The soul may benefit from sadness, for example. Sometimes, when you’re feeling wrecked, you may need to stay home in bed on a day when you should be at work. Care of the soul does not mean becoming a better person or being free of neurotic tendencies. It means that you open your heart and care for your soul and your world, including friends and family members.

Your soul needs daily nourishment of a special kind—friendship, creative work, community, good dining, conversation, humor, a spiritual perspective. If you give your soul what it needs and wants, your life and maybe even your physical health will likely be good. 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.

What are the things that disturb the soul? Doing work you don’t love. Being overwhelmed by the family neuroses, which can be traced back generations. Doing too much so that your friendships suffer. Working so hard that you don’t have enough play and humor in your life. Dealing with a difficult marriage or relationship. Being convinced by a church authority or your family tradition that you should not be sexual. Having been abused sexually or physically, to some degree or another, earlier in life.

The soul can be wounded, but it is so vast and deep that you can work through the wounds that affect almost everyone. You can even use them for strength and understanding. Certain wounds will always be present, but you can go on with a creative and satisfying life that over time deals with the wounds.

These matters I am describing now, such as the emotional wounds and family neuroses, demand special attention, and that is where the professional can offer valuable care and understanding. Professional therapists can teach you how to make sense of your life, even with the complications. 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.

Soul Therapy, Not Life Management

What does it mean to focus on the soul rather than on life, and how do you do it?

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. Communities, as well as individuals, often use the word soul, without defining it, to express how deeply they have been affected by some event—by a tragedy, a death, or a love relationship.

The soul gives you a sense of fate and destiny, even purpose. If you are living a shallow life, unconscious and uneducated, you may just follow the crowd and do what the commercial media tell you to do. You become a consumer whose life goal is more money, more possessions, and a loftier status. You don’t understand what human life is all about, and so your life remains shallow. If you are lucky enough to discover the possibility of a soulful existence, you will find meaning and a future. They make all the difference.

Many people, both clients and professionals, think of therapy as adjusting well and contentedly to a shallow culture. But a soul-oriented therapy has a more serious goal. It wants to be close in touch with the source of your existence and to foster a more deeply engaged life. Part of soulful living is being absorbed in life’s mysteries: love, illness, marriage, a sense of the eternal and timeless, death and the thought of an afterlife.

When a client comes into my room for psychotherapy, I don’t put all my attention on his immediate problems. I talk about what gives him value and what life is asking of him. People, of course, are different from one another. With some I can use the word soul and focus on deepening their lives. Others are more concerned with the pressing issue and think of soul as too “religious.” So I address the problem but always keep the deep soul in mind. I will discuss one of their dreams that offers some insight into the life problem but also a hint of the mysterious and the timeless. I’ll explore one of their life stories that seems to capture the essence of who the person is.

Dreams and the Poetry of a Life

Dreams reveal the deep characters, memories, themes, and fears that are always present though maybe not conscious. And so each time we meet I ask my client for a specific dream with all its imagery. We need access to the depths, and dreams, with all their obscure imagery, reveal patterns and subpersonalities that influence daily life. They show how the past operates in the present by providing images of archetypal patterns and characters, and they are often timely, pinpointing critical matters of the moment.

As a soul-focused therapist, I have to be careful not to get caught up in life issues that are urgent to the client but not deeply relevant. I have to keep at least part of my attention on less visible matters. He says that he’s having trouble with a relationship with a woman much older than him. I remember that he’s been in this situation before. I remember stories of his childhood and his intense connection to his mother. I recall his habits of eating too much when he’s distressed and his tendency to cry when he sees anyone in pain. These factors go together to give me a hint about the man’s essence, about his life-defining mythology, or at least one of its main themes, and the person he is behind all the many experiences. I’m getting closer to the immortal, timeless soul. I remember my studies concerning a mother goddess worshipped by men who have unusual sensitivity and feel a strong need to care. I wonder if to this man the older woman is a mother goddess once again appearing in his life.

To see my client’s soul I need certain conditions to be present. I need to be calm, not excitable or too adventurous. I can’t be blinded by any need to be successful with him or to cure him or to understand his situation completely. I have to listen closely and allow my receptive imagination to be in full power. I keep in mind one of my favorite lines from the poet Rainer Maria Rilke. He describes a flower opening to the morning sun as having “a muscle of infinite receptivity.” I try to picture that delicate muscle that opens a flower and find it in myself as I listen to my client’s emotion-filled words, which speak at a level even he does not grasp.

The Myth Beneath the Life Story

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.

Of course, a friend can also detect the great stories hiding with the simple tales from everyday life. Everyone has an opportunity to be educated in the various genres of literature. Even a little acquaintance helps when you are listening to a friend’s worries. The great stories often peek through the plain, simple ones.

A friend hearing a tale of depression could say, “You sound like Hamlet. I wonder if he is living in you at this moment.”

Classical mythologies involve superhuman figures—gods, goddesses, nymphs, heroes. Personal mythology consists of events in life that stand out and define a person, including people who were bigger than life and places that have special meaning. Some things that happen in childhood become a constant reference later in life. Certain episodes and personalities have enough weight to act as figures of myth, and certain powerful stories gather together into a personal mythology.

At the cultural level mythology explores the grand themes of existence: good versus evil, loss of consciousness, the quest for soul, the journey aspect of life, life-defining love. Each of us has a parallel mythology that can be told in personal terms: separating from mother and father, competing with a sibling, finding a sexual partner, battling difficulties and obstacles, finding your place in community. These are some of th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• Introduction
• Part 1: The Material
• Part 2: The Vessel
• Part 3: Soul Stuff
• Part 4: Therapy in the World
• Part 5: The Therapist
• Acknowledgments
• References
• About the Author
• Copyright
• About the Publisher