Description
Imagine, just for a moment, how many people in the world practice psychotherapy, how many are patients of one therapy or another, and how many are now involved in the growing numbers of therapeutic groups focused on various addictions. One might think that a great deal of ‘soul work’ goes on here. But, due to the fundamental errors at the very founding of the discipline, it may well be that psychotherapy is oriented toward conquering soul rather than entering into soul wisdom.
These lectures on psychoanalysis and spiritual psychology, given at the very time when the ‘talking cure’ was in its beginnings, force us to confront the inadequate knowledge used in founding psychoanalysis and psychotherapy as a method of soul work…. A truly spiritual psychology leads to wisdom of the soul [and] not only takes us out of the limited domain of psychology as concerned with subjective states and into the broader culture, it also takes us into an understanding of the body as the necessary organ through which spiritual perception must find its orientation. -Robert Sardello, (from the introduction)
In these five talks, Rudolf Steiner laid out the foundations for a truly spiritual psychology. The first two lectures take a critical look at the principles of Freud and Jung’s early work. The last three lectures describe the threefold structure of human consciousness and then outline a psychological approach that considers both the soul’s hidden powers and the complex connections between psychological and organic, bodily processes.
Robert Sardello, codirector of The School of Spiritual Psychology, contributed an important and provocative introduction from the perspective of a practicing psychotherapist.
Chapters include Anthroposophy and Psychoanalysis, parts 1 and 2; Spiritual Psychology: Subconscious and Supra-conscious; Hidden Depths of Soul; and Organic Processes and Soul Life.
This is an important work for understanding Steiner’s views on psychoanalytic practices as they appeared in the first quarter of the twentieth century.
