1 - Reintroducing the Soul

Summary

Despite psychology having no place for the soul, there are reasons to reconsider the soul. Soul has a place outside of psychology in many cultures. So we look at formulations of the soul from a variety of cultures. Then we turn to developmental cognitive studies of contemporary folk psychology. These studies explore intuitions in children about the existence of the soul. A final example of experiential dualism comes from studies of people dealing with severe pain and illness, who can experience that their bodies are something that they have and feel at a distance, albeit an oppressive distance. The soul addresses the “phenomenological experience” that people are not simply objects in the physical world. These studies suggest that psychology “with a soul” is the suppressed double of psychology without a soul. The former has not disappeared, it has been marginalized.