Therapists: Be A Human Soul...

“Know all the theories, master all the techniques, but as you touch a human soul be just another human soul.” Carl Jung

I only recently found this quote by Jung. I love it! It's how I've always felt as a therapist and how I'm now hoping to help my supervisees grow into licensed therapists with this understanding.

Coming to a new clinical job after having initially learned my craft in the 70s and early 80s, I'm now learning about a host of "new" therapies that were not named back then nor were there "evidence-based therapies" at the time. There certainly were differing schools of thought and I have been drawn to - and primarily practice - psychodynamic psychotherapy.

Over the years, as I took Continuing Education courses in many of these techniques, I'd think: "but I'm doing that." Of course I was - it just didn't have a specific name or theory behind it.

That's why I love this quote. You can be Sigmund Freud incarnate, but if you don't touch a human soul as just another human soul, there is no treatment and no growth - not only for the client but for the clinician as well.

*Photo from Unsplash by Toa Heftiba