Jan Olof Bengtsson

A Guide for Cultivating Depth and Sacredness in Everyday Life

Harper Collins, 1992     Amazon.com

Front Flap:

The book for our troubled times – a path-breaking lifestyle handbook that shows how to add spirituality, depth, and meaning to modern day life by nurturing the soul. Care of the Soul offers a new way of thinking about everyday life – its problems and its creative opportunities. It proposes a therapeutic way of life that is not a self-improvement project. Instead, its focus is on looking more deeply into emotional problems and sensing sacredness in ordinary things. The ancient model of “care of the soul” was rooted in religion and provided a sacred context for viewing the ordinary moments of everyday life. This new books brings “care of the soul” into the twentieth century and promises to deepen and broaden the reader’s perspective on his or her own life experiences. The author draws on his own life as a therapist practicing “care of the soul”, his studies of the world’s religions, his teaching of Jungian psychology and art therapy, and his work in music and art to create this inspirational guide that examines the connections between spirituality and the problems of individuals and society.

Back Cover Blurbs:

“From time to time I’ve been jolted by an extraordinary book which stops my world. It forces me to look at reality in a diferent way – a more expansive and meaningful way. Thomas Moore’s Care of the Soul is such a book. It has provided a missing piece for me. I soulfully recommend it without reservation.”  John Bradshaw, author of Homecoming

“This book just may help you give up the futile quest for salvation and get down to the possible task of taking care of your soul. A modest, and therefore marvelous, bokk about the life of the spirit.”  Sam Keen, author of Fire in the Belly

“Years pass; I get to read a lot of psychology but the sincerity, intelligence and style – so beautifully clean – of Tom Moore’s Care of the Soul truly moved me. The book’s got strength and class and soul, and I suspect it may last longer than psychology itself.”  James Hillman, author of Re-Visioning Psychology

“In his book, Care of the Soul, Thomas Moore reclaims the Soul for psychotherapy in a deeply moving way. He points out that our wounds offer not only a window that opens a view of our Soul, but also a door to enter its domain. Thomas Moore’s book is a brilliant, challenging and very encouraging voice in the psychotherapeutic world.”  Henri Nouwen, author of Making All Things New

Blurbs from the Harper Perennial edition, 1994:

“There is the depth and originality of Mr Moore’s observations…and a deeply consoling intelligence…that should draw many readers.”  Phyllis Theroux, New York Times Book Review

“Many thanks to Thomas Moore for these profound and timely insights…Genuinely inspirational.”  Kevin McCarthy, Bloomsbury Review

“Invigorating, demanding, and revolutionary.”  Publishers Weekly

“A wonderful book. It will do much to free the world of the medical model of psychotherapy and to help people treasure as individual poetry what they regarded as pathology.”  Polly Berrien Berend, author of Whole Child/Healthy Parent

“Care of the Soul moved me deeply, in ways I only partially understand. It forced me to contemplate my own soul – its likes and dislikes, its particularity.”  Shepherd Bliss, Yoga Journal

“This is an enthralling text. One feels good just reading it…This book makes no claims to perfection: it is just a peaceful little island of good sense in a world where such a commodity is in all-too-short supply.”  Richard Poliver, Bookpage

“Thoughtful, eloquent, inspiring.”  Alix Madrigal, San Francisco Chronicle

“All too seldom one encounters a book as rich and thought-provoking as Care of the Soul…Like Shakespeare or the writings of Joseph Campbell, almost every page reveals a treasure.”  Jerry Pope, Journeymen

“Thomas Moore is an authentic example of a new kind of therapist – a doctor of the soul – which in our century has been in short supply.”  Larry Dossey, M.D., author of Meaning and Medicine and Beyond Illness

Back Flap (About the Author):

Thomas Moore is a psychotherapist and writer who lives in New England. He has published many articles in the areas of archetypal and Jungian psychology, mythology, and the arts. His books include The Planets Within, Rituals of the Imagination, and Dark Eros. He also edited A Blue Fire (HarperCollins), an anthology of the writings of James Hillman. Moore lived as a monk in a Catholic religious order for twelve years. He has a Ph.D. in religious studies from Syracuse University, an M.A. in theology from the University of Windsor, an M.A. in musicology from the University of Michigan, and a B.A. in music and philosophy from DePaul University. He is a leading lecturer and writer in North America and in Europe in the areas of archetypal psychology, mythology, and the arts.