Healing includes alchemical distillation of events

T. Byram Karasu, M.D., Silverman Professor of Psychiatry at Albert Einstein College of Medicine mentions Thomas Moore in yesterday’s Psychology Today blog entry, "Healer Loves the Other". Karasu writes about contact between therapist and patient:

"Not every minute of the session can have the same degree of profundity, but even when what the patient says seems 'meaningless,' it is never without meaning. Thomas Moore tells an anecdote of those in therapy often asking him, 'Aren’t you tired of hearing the same things over and over again?' 'No,' he replies, 'I am quite happy to hear the same thing.' He believes in an alchemical circulation, that the life of the soul depends on a continual going over and over of the material of life. I personally never hear the same thing. Each time it’s different, though seemingly the same. 'New veins can be found in old mines,' said S. Ferenczi.

Amazon.com’s description for Karasu’s book, The Psychotherapist as Healer (2001)includes, "T. Byram Karasu says that healing, at best, is not what the healer does, but what he is; that what really matters are not the schools of psychotherapy, but the psychotherapists themselves."