Soul Lost and Found

In the West, attention to spiritual and mental life originally was subsumed under the Care of Souls, like one full river of religious and psychological currents blended indistinguishably. The soul was tended under care of spiritual mentors within or pushing the boundaries of traditional religions. In the early 20th century, the river forked into two and depth psychology emerged as a separate discipline unfolding since in the proliferating schools of psychoanalysis. We will explore psyche, soul, spirit and the subversive persistence of soul as part of healing. Contra all announced certainties that we have entered a post-religious, even post-spiritual, era, recent decades show instead that soul concerns have infiltrated politics, fundamentalisms of all kinds, and work with the psyche. The soul refuses to be refused. People come to clinicians with an eye to soul as well as psyche because they feel their soul living has been lost. They seek aliveness from a deep place within that radiates outward to shared existence with others and links to something more, however various descriptions of that may be. What became two rivers that seemingly forked into separate directions, now flow towards each other into one again. We will explore this co-existing of psyche and soul currents. We need both facing our unconscious and our soul that dwells in our body, our psyche-soma, and links to collective life and to the meaningful, mysterious aliveness at the heart of life.