Soulmaking is what happens when we live life deeply and learn by heartthe lessons intended from all the conflicts and struggles we encounter.The whole world and all of life are the raw materials for soul-making.And this is pretty much what you get by my reading so far: an exploration of this both from the point of view of someone deeply and long-time engaged in spiritual direction and also a mental health professional. Now, for me, the jury is still out on the author's preferred psychological touchpoint, the Jungian tradition. For me this is because I am mindful that the psychoanalytical approach is scientifically questionable. Though if you are going to use it, then Jung is probably the better conversation-partner because he at least acknowledges something of the significance of what we might call the 'spiritual'. But I do remain to be convinced about things like archetypes. That said, there seems to be enough in the way that Dr Caldwell makes use of this tradition to be somewhat insightful in the face of the real-life instances he brings out for illustrative purposes.
One of the things that I find intriguing and somewhat helpful is dealing with dreams which is one of the first things that Caldwell does. It's an area I've not had opportunity to read around much. And to be frank, I'm dubious about a lot of what I have looked at which takes a formulaic dream symbolism approach. Caldwell doesn't, to my relief, take this approach but seems to do something much closer to what I feel is probably the right way forward which is to attempt to understand dreams within the context of the person's own inner landscape and journeys but taking seriously that these can be channels of God's movement and communication within the soul.
My main beef with this book, and this partly accounts for why I've not yet read it through fully, is that the publisher hadn't done a thorough job on editing for e-book. It looks to me like they have started with a .pdf file and copied the text from there into an e-book template not realising that the originating file has a load of lining out carriage returns which are preserved in the the copying and pasting process. Most of these need to be removed or you get what I am trying to read: a set of lines whose endings don't coincide with the visual endings of my display and so it looks on the page like a long poem and in detail. Thus, sentences are broken part-way through which constantly trips up reading by long-established habits and can wreck sense-making at times. The effect of this is to considerably slow the reading process.
I hope the publisher will address this quickly or Dr Caldwell's book will perhaps not get the readership it deserves.
In the interests of helping you to be aware of any bias on my part, I should let you know that I received this book as a free promotional copy with the request to review it. That said, there is no pressure from the supplier to write a favourable review.
Adventures in Soulmaking: Stories and Principles of Spiritual Formation and Depth Psychology: Troy Caldwell M.D.: 9780996760010: Amazon.com: Books
For British readers, I advise clicking on this link but then substituting ".co.uk" for ".com" (if you'd not already discovered this little trick).
Link-Love:
Troy's website
Adventures in Soulmaking website
Adventures in Soulmaking on Amazon
Adventures in Soulmaking on Goodreads
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