What is soul?

The basis of psychology hides in its name. Psychology is the study of soul. Under the auspices of psychology, soul is immaterial and non-metaphysical. It is not “in here" inasmuch as it is not “out there.” Soul only relates matters that are both substantial to nature and those naturally spiritual, seemingly numinous. Yet 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 remembers such reveries, perspectives, and characteristics. In this respect, soul spirits itself thinkingly, as soul is thoughtfully alive (and therefore in perpetual formation toward death); however, only when we give it thought. Soul is then syntactical, too—alchemical, even. A fermenting sentence.

Soul envelops purposefulness, a deep and ever-deeper purposefulness, through 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 psychoanalyze 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, interest, and care. 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 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 might accept its life that we find ourselves thrown into. We might serenade it for its indwelling depth. For once, we in our humanness might live.

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The name of my clinical practice, Einfell, originates in soulful language. It is mythological. The name Einfell also relates to the German word Einfälle, taken to mean the motioning of an oncoming idea, and the Icelandic word Fjall or Fell, by which is meant mountain (or more specifically, glaciated mountain). In English, the Icelandic word Fell is pronounced like the word Felt. So, the name of my clinical practice can be understood as an image of the soul-making process as a geographic place. It is the mythological environment wherein depressed depths provoke the beauty of archetypal truths. In other words, the name of my clinical practice, Einfell, can 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-expression.” It is the living process of psychotherapy rendered imaginally, and as such, it is the theoretical ground that situates the work that psychotherapy and psychoanalysis aim to perform.