Love this line from Carl Jung:
Learn your theories as well as you can, but put them aside when you touch the miracle of the living soul. Not theories but your own creative individuality alone must decide.
from Contribution to Analytical Psychology
(1928) Carl C. Jung
Clinical training alone without this understanding can actually strip compassion and empathy away. Clinical language has a way of dehumanizing the subject. I’d say that if someone is truly touching the miracle of the soul theory becomes unnecessary. I personally like having access to both and for most folks the process of coming to awareness about these things involves both (if they’re in the mental health field anyway). I do think there are wise souls everywhere however and it doesn’t matter one bit if they’ve ever read a book on psychology.
I share below a collection of posts based on my observation of having been a mental health professional who was also treated by the mental health system:
● Bridging Patient-Professional Divide — this is the most developed piece in the bunch (first posted at Mad in America)
● To the mental health professional, healer heal thyself
● Healer heal thyself (to the mental health professional)
● Healing journey (brief thoughts from this morning to a friend…unedited) The truth is my journey to healing has been so isolated, by necessity and because there has been NO available professionals with the appropriate skill sets, I’ve had to find my own healing path.
● Part 2, healing journey: Attn: mental health professionals of all stripes — “It’s okay to let your clients leave you without declaring them resistant to your care. They know better than you do when they are ready to work and with whom. It should not be assumed that just because they walk out of your office they are not finding their way even as they take that action…”
● Health care professionals discriminate
● The mental health professional and the patient (wrapped into one).
Everything Matters 
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