Carl Jung - Modern Man in Search of a Soul

The first time I encountered the work of Carl Jung was when I plucked this volume from the shelves of a bookshop sometime during my mid-late teens. Having no idea at the time who this man was, or about psychoanalysis, I imagine I was attracted by the title.

Carl Jung and the Soul.

I find this passage fascinating today, in a world where we must all be ever quicker to 'know'. Alluding to a way of working that seeks not to impinge upon the patient/client/analysand with 'expertise', or to demand that the person coming for therapy knows what they want, but allowing for something to emerge from the encounter. One of the qualities of soul is a move away from haste, rushing. Getting to what one wants too quickly—premature growth—can result in psyche bringing us back to the ground of where we were, a reaction to an overwhelm of unfamiliar terrain.

"As far as possible, I let pure experience decide the therapeutic aims. This may perhaps seem strange, because it is usually assumed that the therapist should have an aim. But it seems to me that in psychotherapy especially it is advisable for the physician not to have too fixed a goal. He can scarcely know what is wanted better than nature and the will-to-live of the sick person. The great decisions of life have far more to do with the instincts and other mysterious unconscious factors, than with conscious will and well-meaning reasonableness. The shoe that fits one person pinches another; there is no recipe for living that suits all cases.

None of these considerations, of course, prevents us doing everything possible to make the lives of patients normal and reasonable. If this brings about a satisfactory result, then we can let it go at that; but if it is insufficient, for better or for worse, then the therapist must be guided by the data presented through the patient's unconscious. Here we must follow nature as a guide, and the course the physician then adopts is less a question of treatment than of developing the creative possibilities that lie in the patient himself"

C GJung (1933)