MB: Your whole work seems to be in a way about soul making.
MW: I would say that’s true – or soul mirroring. More and more I tend to see the soul expressing itself in body symptoms – in the way the body moves, in the dreams. I see it almost as a prisoner with the complexes squeezing in to take the life out of it. So, I try to do the mirroring that the parents were not able to do. The soul just became more and more encased. It wasn’t heard in a child’s body. It wasn’t seen. And that’s because the parents often have their own agenda as to what the child is, so they want it to act and speak in a certain way. The result is that the soul goes underground. I see therapy as an attempt to reconnect what that child has lost, the soul child.
MB: There are a lot of books out on the concept of the soul. Do you have a definition?
MW: Well, for me, the soul is the divine part of us that is embodied in this physical form for a few years. Eventually it is released, but I see soul as the embodied part. I see spirit as the energy, the disembodied energy that can come in to union with the soul in the body. For example, a great dancer like Nureyev can prepare his instrument. His muscles can be in perfect shape through his attention and his concentration. So, his consciousness, his light in his body–which for me would be soul–can be a perfect instrument. But, he’s a great dancer when spirit is in union with that instrument. The leap is in the union of soul and spirit.
MB: So, a lot of your work is freeing up the soul so that it can be able to get in that union?
MW: Yes, so the soul is strong enough to be able to accept that union. If it is weak, or if the body is not conscious, the spirit could come flashing in and cause a psychotic episode. It’s like a Rolls Royce engine in a Volkswagen car. The energy could blast the container to pieces and that does happen to people. It’s in that surrender to the transcendent…that art is created. I think of the soul as feminine, because it’s the receiver–in both men and women. The artist, for example, has to have a receiver and just hopes to God that the spirit will come and touch into soul so that there will a poem come out of that union or a piece of music or art. It’s in that surrender to the transcendent, or however you want to call the spirit energy, that art is created. That manifests in dreams. A lot of people dream that there’s going to be a wedding and the bride is all ready but there is no groom or there’s something wrong with the groom. He’s too young or he’s got no legs or no heart or he’s dying. Sometimes there’s something wrong with the bridesmaid–the shadow side of the bride. So the union can’t take place until they come together as equals and some people are at that stage now.
MB: It seems that’s the place at the end of a long quest. Does that have to be done through processes like psychoanalysis? Not everyone is going to be able to find the therapist to get them there.
MW: I don’t think it has to come through psychoanalysis. I mean not many people will get there if it did. I think it can come through life, with an experience, through loss–if people care enough about consciousness. You know, what does this loss – of relationship, of my partner in love, the job – mean? Suffering does seem to give us a chance to really come to consciousness. I think the world we’re in so many people would rather go into an addiction or into unconsciousness. The journey I’m talking about is a conscious journey and certainly many people in the past, through their religious faith, have gone on this journey. But, I do see psychotherapy as a speeding up of the psychic process. In the Middle Ages people were terrified of miners and blacksmiths. Miners went into the earth and raped it before the jewels or minerals were ready to come out. They thought this was going against God’s timing and that they would be punished. There is a point…where people are addicted to being victims. It’s very important to want to walk on your own.
A lot of people have similar feelings about therapists and analysts, that they are raping the unconscious by putting this kind of heat on the psyche. What this process does is speed up the maturation process and … More