“Care of the Soul” is the title of a book by Thomas Moore in which he presents his vision of a new kind of psychotherapy—one in which psychology and spirituality are reunited into a living whole.
The core idea of the book is that there is a difference between
(1) healing the soul and (2) caring for the soul.
While healing the soul aims to remove problems, caring for the soul seeks to recognize the spiritual value of what we call “problems” and use it as a path of inner development.
From this follows another important distinction:
in healing, there is the assumption that once the problems are removed, we will finally be able to enjoy life.
In contrast, care of the soul sees life as an ongoing series of challenges that never truly end. What changes is not the presence of difficulty, but its form and meaning.
“…care of the soul differs in scope from modern notions of psychology and psychotherapy. It is not about curing, fixing, changing, adjusting, or healing, nor about some idea of perfection or even improvement. It does not seek an ideal, problem-free existence in the future.
It remains humbly rooted in the present, close to the life that unfolds day by day, and at the same time oriented toward religion and spirituality.”
— Thomas Moore
I resonate deeply with this author’s perspective and find this distinction profoundly helpful. Different psychological difficulties require different therapeutic approaches, and if we truly want to be of help to those who seek psychotherapy, we need to recognize these differences. Because in psychotherapy there is room both for healing the soul and for caring for the soul.
By healing, I understand psychotherapeutic work with past trauma and the release of the energy that has been frozen within it. At this level, the important transformation of outdated attitudes and beliefs about life also takes place—beliefs that no longer fit the developing identity. When we heal, we allow something to leave our lives, and this release brings a lightness we did not have before. Things we previously experienced as problems may no longer appear as such. For some people, healing the soul is enough.
For others, it is not. For them, healing is only the preliminary phase before entering something deeper. One could say that when the impulse of individuation (the soul) awakens, care of the soul begins. Roberto Assagioli, the founder of psychosynthesis, describes this stage in the following way:
“Those who strive too zealously for perfection should constantly remember that the work of inner rebirth is carried out by the spirit and by spiritual energies. Their personal task is to attract these forces through inner self-surrender, meditation, and the right state of soul, and to remove what hinders the free action of the spirit.
If they fulfill this task, all that remains is to wait with patience and trust for the unfolding of spiritual action in the soul.”
— Roberto Assagioli
I find Assagioli’s words very precise: the defining quality of care of the soul is patience, allowing, presence. It is the effort to understand—an effort that helps us accept aspects of ourselves and of others that once felt foreign, disturbing, or repelling. Unlike healing the soul, where we are active agents of change, here the process gradually reverses. The activity of consciousness and resistance to inertia remain, but receptivity increasingly comes to the foreground. As Assagioli writes, this is how we become receptive vessels for spiritual energies working within us.
That is why another key word here is trust.
For me, trust is the most intimate form of spiritual faith and connection to the Source. At this stage, suffering does not disappear—but our relationship to it changes.
“Therefore, the first thing to say about care of the soul is that it is not primarily a method of solving problems. Its aim is not to make life problem-free, but to bring into ordinary life the depth and value that come with soulfulness.
In a sense, it is a much greater challenge than psychotherapy, because it is concerned with cultivating a deeply expressive and meaningful life at home and in society.
It is a challenge also because it requires imagination from each of us. In therapy, we place our problems at the feet of professionals whom we assume are trained to solve them for us. In care of the soul, we ourselves have the task—and the pleasure—of shaping our lives for the good of the soul.”
— Thomas Moore
The distinction between healing the soul and caring for the soul, although not new, is essential. Similar distinctions appear in other psychotherapeutic traditions such as Jungian analysis, humanistic psychotherapy, logotherapy, and psychosynthesis.
So, if you are among those who have already walked a long path of healing and self-knowledge, and yet your suffering—though perhaps in another form—continues, I believe this understanding can bring consolation. Because, as Moore writes, “the goal of care of the soul is not to make life problem-free, but to bring depth and value into ordinary life.”
Kameliya Hadzhiyska
Note: The quotations are translated from Bulgarian and are not presented as verbatim citations.
