Psyche, spirit or soul?

Before I head back into the subject of Eros and psychotherapy, I want to investigate the confusion in meanings attributed to the concepts of soul and spirit. We are shaped by the beliefs embedded in our language, so it is worth taking a look at the ideas underpinning our experience of being human. Not least because I find it difficult to understand the difference between spirit and soul.

So many writers have used the term soul for both - or spirit for both!

So let's start where I left off in my last post. In Jungian thought, we have soul (sulphur) and spirit (Mercury). Sulphur is Soul, the seat of desire, fiery and alive, It is the ability to act. It is energy. Think of it as inner fire. Mercury is Spirit, it is changeable, communicative, reflective. It is 'the world-creating spark hidden within all matter'. Think of it as the light of enlightenment. For it interfaces soul and body and enables consciousness. The mode of communication created by spirit is imagination, the creation of phantasms. 

Spirit reflects the world and flows around every shape - this is why things make 'an impression' on us. And Spirit is the inner star, pulsating and glowing with imagination. 

But spirit is surrounded by soul. As spirit reaches out to contact the world, its perception is shaped through soul. How we feel changes how we see and understand.

Salt is something I don't understand yet. All I know is, the combination of sulphur with mercury is Salt.

Salt is the word materialised...

To quote Jung:

The alchemists’ concept of imagination is the most important key to understanding the Opus. We have to conceive of their imaginal processes not as the immaterial phantoms that we take fantasy pictures to be, but as something corporeal—a subtle body. The act of imagining was like a physical ingredient that could be fitted into the cycle of material changes in the lab. The alchemist related himself not only to his unconscious but directly to the substance he hoped to transform through the power of imagination. The alchemical act of imagining is therefore a concentrated extract of life forces that produces a subtle body, a psychoid hybrid of the physical with the psychic.

Jung's description of the dialogue between imagination, action and creation in terms of alchemical process, resonates with the theory of social constructivism. SC explains the formation of meaning constructed through social interaction, and cultural context. But the same process of naming and defining, changes how people behave. Jung is talking about synchronicity and uncanny events. I'm noting that ideas change how people interact with each other, with things. The process of reification fits here, too. And the concept of hermeneutical epistemic injustice. Incidentally, both psychotherapy and religion use similar (to each other) core principals to extricate or inoculate others against anti-social constructs. 

And all social constructs claim to be true.

Religion and psychotherapy are both complex social constructs...but this fits into discussions about ARGs, catfishing and conspiracy theory - am I being tangential enough?

So, back to soul and spirit!

A long, long time ago now - probably twenty years - I was smitten with the full blast of Eros's power. Without much ado, we both took off our clothes and lay together, sharing breath and our story - for we had lived the same story from opposite sides. We were the compassion and understanding for each other that had been absent at a crossroad moment of searing pain in our lives.  

Our separate and opposite experiences happened during our separate and opposite adulthoods. Nothing to do with our childhood!

At a time of crisis we had both had to make a sacrifice that wounded the soul. We had both had to drink deep from a cup no one would chose. 

Only he could reach me - is how I felt. 

We lay in the deepest layer of 'relational depth' possible...no sex with my man of stars, and no afterwards. 

Sharing breath was far more intimate.

Breath like liquid light, as pure spirit, pouring into the each other's soul. 

Before I met the man of stars there had been such a strange experience of blue light... which foreshadowed our healing experience. 

This was cruelly twisted and reconfigured in therapy with Kit, his face often illuminated by blue flashes as we spoke on Zoom; ambulances carrying Covid victims to hospital. And the awfulness of the blue sun, a phantasm, as I left his room for the last time. 

Anyway, when we did speak of the soul - I and the man of stars - he told me that there are three layers of soul. Perhaps it is similar to the Tibetan system in which there are three layers of perception too, Dharmakaya (plenum void), Sambhogakaya (senses) and Nirmanakaya (form). It seemed that his concept was very like the Buddhist version, more about emanation than transcendence...

I'm out of my depth here!

But in psychotherapy terms, as I've said before, it is highly likely that Fritz Perls was influenced by Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche during the halcyon days of psychotherapist super-stardom at Esalan, as the human-potential movement was in full swing!

The Gestalt contact cycle - and especially the language of 'the fertile ground (plenum void/ full- empty/ Dharmakaya) as giving rise to figures (Nirmanakya) and only on contact (Sambogakaya) may they release their energy back into the void...definitely reminds me of the Tibetan stuff.

This world is a fascinating place!

But Eros?

I'd say that my encounter with the man of stars was one of the most Eros led experiences of my life. We both went with it, neither of us knew how we had been linked, and neither of us could have known how powerful this meeting would be. For him I represented purity, and for me - he was my Lucifer - from his breath I drew in Wittgenstein, Babylonian mythology and stars. From me, he took Jung...

And I am contrasting this with how Kit and I behaved...or rather, the effect of ignoring the power of Eros, of denigrating Eros, and then crucifying each other. 

When I think of Kit, I think of Bruno, a nail hammered through his tongue to prevent him from talking. When I think of Kit I think of righteous moral outrage empowering and transmitting fear; how ideas, thinking, creativity and joy were reflected as danger in those sessions. 

All exploration ends when the nail is hammered in, when questions are unasked, when feelings are dismissed. When nothing can be said in a meaningful way...

Having silenced the other... so beguiled by one's own power of truth and reason. Inhaling one's own spirit, creates madness. Spirit as mercury. And mercurial fumes leading to the Mad hatter's tea party! 

And that really is a perfect description of my non-therapy!

There was none of this with the Man of Stars. We both accepted the invitation and allowed ourselves to change.