Loin des doctrines, à l’écoute de l’âme

Psychology is more than a career: it is an initiatory pathway, a way towards knowledge of the soul. Marie de Hennezel is a psychologist. She has a wealth of experience accompanying people at the end of their lives, which nourish her reflections on the meaning of life and ways of dying in a society which denies old age and death. Having worked with the sick for ten years before being entrusted with the mission for raising palliative-care awareness by the Ministry of Health in France, she describes her journey. Referring to her career of psychologist, imbued in the research of Carl Gustav Jung, she has never stopped questioning what constitutes the true heart of her practice. Helping another, accompanying them, is about learning to speak to their soul, and learning to listen, to accommodate the words of the other, to accept their truth which just wants to be heard, far from any doctrine. This testimony is a fine lesson in humanity, presented with simple and profound words which speak straight to the soul. "Taking the risk of the soul, the risk of engaging one's own soul in the encounter with the other's, this is our job. To speak to the soul of the other. To let that soul speak, to hear it, to talk with it, to care for it. This is the mission of the psychologist." (Marie de Hennezel) TABLE OF CONTENTS• The third term• Speak to me of grace• Do not seek to understand• The sacred ground of dreams• The affective approach• At the heart of the illness, the spiritual• On the borders of death