An Etymological History

These days, you might be surprised if your counsellor asks you about your soul. But this wasn’t always the case. In fact, the etymological roots of the profession of counselling therapy—words like psychology and psychotherapy—involve the soul. The very words that name this vocation “point to the soul”—the etymology of the word psyche is soul, and the etymology of the word therapist is servant or attendant, and thus etymologically a psychotherapist is a “servant or attendant of the soul” (Elkins, 1995, p. 78).

The word psychology, similarly, means the study of the soul (eg. Brown, 2021; Elkins, 1995; Hammer, 2019; Moore, 1992). And the word psychopathology—defined these days as “the study of mental illnesses” (Cambridge)— originally comes from the words ‘psyche’ and ‘pathos,’ which literally means “the suffering of the soul” (Elkins, 1995, p. 78).

What a difference in tone there is between the modern usage of these words and their etymological origins.

If there is one essential element for nurturing souls in counselling, it is found in the therapeutic relationship (Ottens & Klein, 2005). This is because caring for the soul, of course, involves caring—and caring is not possible without relationship. Caring is a relationship.
 
In this way, a good relationship will do the work for us—what we do or say as therapists is not as important (Ottens & Klein, 2005; Vasavada, 2019). Relationship is the “third thing,” the “superordinate factor” that, with our openness and participation, comes to act on our behalf (Vasavada, 2019).
 
Much of the methodological underpinnings of caring for soul that you will find elsewhere in this blog are not possible without a strong relational base. This, again, is because they are care-oriented, as in adopting a care vs. cure mentality; the ability to trust the process rather than rush to fix; and the ability for a client to vulnerably explore their imagination and felt sense in front of another.

Background of the Psychology Field: Cure Orientation
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Much of the landscape of the Western mental health care system is generally aligned with the Western medical system (Ottens and Klein, 2005). Psychotherapy, in its attempts to be “taken seriously,” generally aligns itself with the scientific worldview that dominates the medical model (Kochunas, 1997). Many writers on the subject feel that the psychotherapy field has lost its soul due to this—in particular, due to an emphasis on the randomized control trials, audit culture, empirical research, and pharmacology that dominate the Western medical model (eg. Elkins, 1995; House, 2012; Ottens & Klein, 2005). Much of the psychology world, like the medical world, operates from a ‘diagnosis’ or ‘disease’ framework, and employs control, cure, and rationality as treatment (Ottens and Klein, 2005).

It is our nature, as humans, to make sense of the world around us based on the information and stimuli we receive. From this, we draw conclusions, solidify knowledge, make meaning. The scientific worldview, with which the medical model of psychology aligns is based on this—it is essentially a complex system of discovery and measurement designed to produce evidence, based on our innate desire to know.
 
As individuals, our drive to know is shuttered by our own experience of things—our memories, senses, ideas, thoughts, intellects, traumas, feelings—and we take these things to indicate the true nature of the external world. We are, perhaps, too quick to take this as evidence of the nature of ultimate reality. “It is with an enviable and amazing simplicity she attributes her own sensations to the unknown universe” (Underhill, 1911, p. 6).
 
Because of all of this, sitting and waiting in a place of not knowing can be challenging—excruciating for some. Many of the internal mechanisms we have spent our life developing are in defense of this—the fear of the unknown.

Imagination is amongst the greatest therapeutic tools one can use to engage the soul. This is because imagination is the language of the soul (eg. Moore, 2021; Quillman, 2020). Imagination is how we experience and perceive what exists beyond our rational cognition. We must suspend our disbelief towards our own beyond-rational modes of knowing in order to experience the soul, in order to work with our own intuition. Imagination is the language the unknown uses to call back to the known. It is the bridge between ‘what is’ and what could be. 
 
In counselling, we can care for the soul by inviting the imagination to play an important role in the therapeutic process, both implicitly and explicitly. We can open the counselling space up to imagination by trusting the process and waiting in the unknown. We can use the imaginal as an intervention tool. And we can also engage with imaginal modes of inquiry. All of this can help us explore, nurture, and understand deeper needs that exist beyond our immediate ability to grasp.  

​Our soul is here on earth, feeling the warmth of the sun on our skin, the hug of a loved one, the serenity of a quiet moment, the quickened heart rate of anxiety, the ache of loss. The body houses the soul—but is also intertwined with the soul, as much as our experience of being alive is entwined with the experience of having a body (Swinton, 2020).
 
This means the body can help us experience the soul.
 
The Felt-Sense
 
One of the ways we might experience the soul is through attuning to our “felt sense” (Leijssen, 2008; Holified; 2020). The felt sense is a non-verbal dimension of our experience. It uses the body, because the body feels, the body senses. At the same time, the felt sense is also the domain of the ineffable, the numinous, the sacred, the supernatural, because it is an innate capacity for discernment that that does not involve processes of logic or rational thinking (Holifield, 2020). The felt-sense connects body and soul—this sensing part of us relies on sensation and beyond-logical wisdom to discern choices, paths, meanings.