I wish to begin this paper by playing a short piece of music composed by Richard Einhorn and inspired by the life and writings of Joan of Arc. At the age of 13 in 1425 this shepherd girl from the village of Domremy in France began to hear voices. At sixteen these voices were telling her that she had been given a divine mission to reunite France. It is said that she heard the voice of God when the church bell rang. This piece is called 'The Final Walk' as she faces her execution. In 1920 nearly 500 years after her death at the hands of the church she was declared a saint.

The basis of this paper have been the musings, conversations and reading over many years of a person who has been endeavoring to explain why it is that people who have been through the experience of a mental illness provide the potential of connection with deeper parts of who we are in a way that is not commonly found. I have welcomed the writings of consumers themselves to give light to this question, some studies, and the current resurgence of discussion about the nature and need for the spiritual dimension in life. It has been unfortunate that

The place of the 'soul' in recovery

Miller, J.S. (1990). Mental illness and spiritual crisis: Implications for psychiatric rehabilitation. Psychosocial Rehabilitation Journal 14(2). pp. 29-47.

Sara Maitland wrote a lovely article in a recent OpenMind journal about the experience of hearing voices. The whole issue of hearing voices is a complex one. It is usually considered a definite sign that someone is experiencing a form of mental illness (Kirk 1992). The aim of treatment is to remove the voices. That is understandable given their potentially alienating, disturbing and even dangerous effects. Sara asks 'Do all voice hearers want all their voices silenced at all times?' She goes on to say that her voices are often companions, expressive and glorious and they give access to fascinating things about her, and that what she would like, would be skills to understand and decode the voices, not to repress them. "My voices seem to me to be very like having highly active and intelligent toddlers in the house: the exhaustion they cause does not mean you want them dead - it means you want them to behave better." Sara also goes on to talk about how psychiatry has not taken much interest in the content of voices. At Joan of Arc's trial she says that the content of Joan's voices was the principle concern. And even though the outcome for Joan of Arc was not good, the Inquirers did take the time to ascertain the value of the content of her voices in relation to how she lived her life. Instead today to admit to voice hearing is enough to gain a label such as schizophrenia and so people deny hearing the voices as it means more medication or medical intervention or hospitalisation and the feeling that you are at risk.

Soul is associated with depth and unlike much of Western spirituality which is about overcoming, growing, ascending, transcending, soul means going down, descending into the valleys and experiencing the tragedies of life, of being in a place where the idea of climbing a mountain seems completely beyond reach. Soul is with us when everyone else has gone, when our ego is shattered, when alone in the night no one is interested in our pain and we wonder how we will survive until morning. And while no one would ever go looking for such pain or experiences, when it is past, and we look back, it is possible to be grateful for it, because it opens something within us, it gives us a depth, it makes us feel more human, and we know with some relief, that there is more to us than simply flesh and blood. Psychopathology is the most tragic cry of the soul, when a person is in deepest pain and confronted by death, meaningless, isolation and loneliness. If you know anything about the creative process, most musicians, writers, poets, artists have created their work, not from the mountain top, but from the place of the soul.

Psyche means soul and psychology is the study of the soul, psychologist is servant or attendant of the soul with psychopathology meaning 'the suffering of the soul'(Elkins). Therefore if we as mental health professionals were to reclaim the roots of our profession, as many people are trying to do today, we could not consider approaching the rehabilitation of a person with a psychiatric disability without considering the place of 'soul' in their recovery. This by no means is a radical concept, but in an attempt to balance the more empirical nature of treatment, people in this profession are looking back and reclaiming the tradition which has always been there, but in practice often passed over or dismissed. Hillman wrote in 1975 'Where there is connection to soul, there is psychology; where not, what is taking place is better called statistics, physical anthropology, cultural journalism or animal breeding' (Elkins). And Jung wrote in 1933 that of all his patients over the age of 35, not one was healed who did not develop a spiritual orientation to life (Elkins).

Perera, S.B. The Scapegoat Complex: Toward a Mytholo

Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 4288
Approximate Pages = 17 (250 words per page double spaced)