What is soul?
The conceptual basis of psychology hides in its name. Psychology is the study of soul. Under the auspices of psychology, soul is immaterial yet not metaphysical. It is not “in here" inasmuch as it is not “out there.” Soul only relates matters that are both substantial to human nature and to those naturally spiritual, seemingly numinous. But soul is not. It does not exist as such.
What may be said of soul? Soul positively glimmers. Its self-display is the process by which imagination animates the way any given phenomenon––whether an emotion, a memory, or an idea––shelters a sense of significance. Sometimes soul presents through our bodies and sometimes through a body of dreams. Soul is itself dreamy. In this way, soul looks to be descriptive and adjectival. The face of soul smiles through the styles of our perspectives, capacities, character, and qualities.
Soul also negatively concretizes. It does so when self-reflection cauterizes the shape of our reveries, perspectives, and characteristics. In this respect, soul spirits itself thinkingly, as soul is thoughtfully alive (and therefore in perpetual formation toward a kind of logical death); however, only when we give it thought. Soul is then syntactical, too. Alchemical, even. A fermenting sentence.
Soul envelops an atmosphere of purposefulness, a deep and ever-deeper purposefulness, as its interior dasein. To reflect on the idea of purposefulness is to meaningfully come home to soul’s notion. But reflection requires work. Soul work, soul-making. Soul-making is the very process of psychotherapy. When we psycho-analyze in therapy, we attend to the life of soul as it should sing through our heartfelt thinking. Attending suggests listening, which requires much of our rigor, playfulness, patience; our generosity, humor, and imagination. Attending to soul also requires responsiveness and lingering, interest and foolishness, care and brazenness. By listening to soul, soul makes itself.
Underneath everything, soul is not solipsistically stated nor is it styled simply. Soul is instead dialogical and dialectically fashioned. In soulful reflection, we thoughtfully undress the feelings, the emotions, and the moods constituting the images of our inner lives, relationships, and understandings. Therein we become more of ourselves, to paraphrase Søren Kierkegaard. Or, to paraphrase C.G. Jung, we dream the myth onward. And if we are not too careful, by making soul we accept its life that we find ourselves thrown into. Such acceptance serenades soul for its indwelling depth. A hopeful side effect of this is that, for once, we in our humanness may live for ourselves.
The name of my clinical practice, Einfell, founds itself in soulful language. It is mythological, metaphorical. The etymology of Einfell relates to the German word Einfälle, which is taken to mean the motioning of an oncoming idea, as well as the Icelandic word Fjall or Fell, by which is meant mountain (or more specifically, glaciated mountain). In English, the Icelandic word Fell is pronounced similar to the word Felt. So, the name Einfell can be first understood as something of an image: the soul-making process as the atmosphere of a place to inhabit; the mythological environment wherein depressed depths provoke the beauty of archetypal truths. Secondly, in other words, the name of my clinical practice may be understood as the psychological setting in and by which soul makes itself through an attendance to the felt form of its oncoming notional self-articulation. It is the living process of psychotherapy rendered imaginally and logically, and as such, it is the theoretical ground that situates the work that psychotherapy and psychoanalysis aim to perform.