Event on Monday: What happened to 'the soul'?

Hang on, didn't we used to have souls?

I grew up thinking there were clear dividing lines between mind, body and soul, and I was happy to have all three of them. Perhaps it's just me, but it feels like, imperceptibly over the eighties, nineties and noughties, the soul was secularised away.

Around this time I sensed that even the mind started giving away to the brain, which in turn collapses into a broader notion of our material body and nervous system, which then gives way to genes...and it doesn't even end there...Perhaps the reason I came to be in my current role is that I acquired such a strong felt sense that our common sense notion of what makes us human beings is completely at odds with the scientific account, and my interest in spirituality may be because the front line of this battle for the integrity of our understanding and experience is our idea of the soul.

Personally, I feel like I haven't heard about 'the soul' in public life for years. It's as if this fundamental part of us was gradually theorised out of existence, and we collectively and unwittingly 'forgot' about something that used to be fundamental to our understanding of what it is to be human.

'The death of the soul' is part of the process of secularisation (a complex notion though that is) and the conventional wisdom among most scientists and analytic philosophers is that the soul is a mostly religious and pre-modern folksy notion that makes no sense with respect to modern understandings of our evolved bodies and brains. If you don't move in those kinds of intellectual orbits though, this news - the death of the soul- might come as a bit of a shock!

Moreover, for many, including our prior speaker in this series, Guy Claxton, soul-like phenomena relating to meaning and transcendence can be explained without 'the soul'. Indeed, Guy would probably say the loss of 'the soul' did no real harm to our souls. Others would go further, and say moving beyond quaint metaphysical notions of the soul liberates us, and allows us to be more authentically soulful.

Sometimes words capture elements of experience that we lose forever when those words disappear.

But is that right? Even if we don't adhere to a religious or even philosophical (technically 'ontological') account of individual souls, surely it's not so easy just to discard the notion, and everything caught up with the soul without some loss of perspective. Sometimes words capture elements of experience that we lose forever when those words disappear.

And perhaps the soul is still very much alive. It remains meaningful to speak of 'Schools with Soul' for instance, to love soul music, and most of us know people or places that feel 'soulful'. Moreover some, including many psychotherapists, would go further and say that many mental health challenges relate to the neglect of 'the soul' at a societal level.

Personally, that makes sense to me. As I recently argued, I think our obsession with our 'place' in the world leads us to neglect our more fundamental 'ground', and that this neglect may prevent us from living our lives at their generous best.

It is therefore exciting to report that on Monday the celebrated author of the brilliant and extraordinary book 'The Master and his Emissary', polymath, psychiatrist and RSA fellow Iain McGilchrist will speak directly to these fundamental matters in his talk What Happened to the Soul? as part our series of events exploring the nature and value of spirituality in light of modern understandings of human nature.

Iain seems the perfect person to interrogate this question, in light of his background in sciences and humanities. He understands why 'the soul' cannot be what we used to think it was, but also why we may need it nonetheless.

I don't want to steal Iain's thunder, but from a brief call with him earlier today it sounds like the content of the talk will be very rich indeed. We might learn what it means to think of the soul not as 'a thing' but as a process or disposition; why it makes sense to say we can grow or extinguish souls, how individual souls relate to collective souls, and personally I was pleased to hear that Carl Jung might even get a mention or two.

As regular readers of this blog will know, we have paid close attention to Iain's work before, but for those who want a quicker hit, here is a video of an RSAnimate of Iain's last talk at the RSA, which is rapidly approaching a million and a half views.

The event is sold out, but will be live streamed. If you want to know more about your soul(!) you can tune in live and ask questions via #RSASpirituality.