What’s in a word?

The word psyche relates to the human soul or the innermost self perhaps the true being. I like the thought of soul but then I guess that I might. In Greek mythology Psyche was the goddess of the soul who was said to have been a beautiful almost as much as Aphrodite, she was to inspire the love of Eros the god of desire. The word therapist relates to a person who specialises in therapeutic treatment of impairment, injury, or disorder. So, when a fellow counsellor at CAMHS described himself as a psychotherapist, and I asked him what this meant he told me that he was a healer of the soul. This person was not overtly religious and may have taken a wider view of what “soul” meant but, a healer of the psyche, nevertheless.

I have to say that this has been an ongoing debate in the counselling world, within the definition of Counsellor and Psychotherapist. BACP is the British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy and seems at times to not make a distinction. I understand that in a medical model psychotherapist are trained counsellors or psychologist who have some 400 hours clinical practice hours post initial training and to work in a medical situation. None of which seems to address anything about the soul or inner being.

There is also some discussion in the therapy world about spirituality, this being seen as an essential if little oft spoken of area. In the Christian counselling world (of which I am not really a part) Rev Frank Lake was the go to with many clergy reading his book clinical theology (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Clinical-Theology-Frank-Lake/dp/0232481911) that was essentially about pastoral care of those in the parish. Many people if asked would probably think of some sort of priestly or ministerial work when asked about healing the soul. Perhaps images of entering a small wooden box and soft mummering’s to a partially hidden priest with 10 hail Mary’s and a couple of Our Fathers penance. Maybe weekly communion, transubstantiated bread, and wine; body and blood. There is a lot to be said for this, but too often it is not just hearing another offer forgiveness it is the reaching for the forgiveness of the self that is the real hard part. 

I truly believe that our inner world or words become real when we speak to them. Those thoughts that we have or have had when we say them, they come from within our self into the world. It is as though when we speak them, we realise that they are real to the everyday and ordinary. Its difficulty to explain but perhaps our thinking is a bit like writing on Instagram of X on our computer or phone, they remain contained until we chose to press the send button when they become a reality in the world. What we write say or do has consequences to others and for ourselves. There is a reality to them. I think this is particularly so when they are our fears and concerns, hurts, and wounding, we carry so much around within ourselves, from accidental and deliberate action of others and ourselves. Allowing them to become spoken shared with another human can cathartics the inside pain and hurt. We don’t do it because of the shame and guilt associated with them and so it is turned inside and can be corrosive. These wounds scar with hardened tissue that in-time becomes the armour we use to create distance and pseudo protection from the next hurt, shame or threat. We are not made for this. Our inner landscape brought so small so crowded that there is nothing left for anything more. It is diminishing of the human soul self and much like a balloon in a small box more expansion causes the box to fill and then to pop open.

When starting to realise that the inner domain is throwing up issues or patterns of behaviour becomes intrusive our lives can become the ground upon which we find our own ball to roll continually upwards only to have it roll back upon us, so we must start again. Like Sisyphus who the god Zeus forces to do this for eternity, Sisyphus was punished for his trickery, because he cheated death twice. There is something about the way that we would rather seek the quick trick than confront the obvious. We repeat actions and cycles of behaviour because it difficult to seek the healing of what is deep within us. What the great person-centred therapist Karl Rogers called ‘our core being’. He related that everything strives to become the best self it can be, but that to often this can be limited by the environment we find ourselves in, the limiting factors of our everyday lives. Gestalt therapy speaks about the ‘field’ which is the everyday interior landscape of the psyche. The everyday stuff we deal with. But from this emerge issues from time to time, that become predominant and problematic. Too often these are issues that have not found completion (this is called the gestalt cycle or wave) and need to be revisited or completed. Sometimes this can be done easily, as in ‘brief therapy’, but at times this will take a bit of time and what we may call soul searching.