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.