Soul Size

Soul-Size: The Eternal Psychosomatic Dilemma, by James Dyson, MD; Portalbooks (2022), 208 pages.

review by Fred Dennehy

There is a tendency to imagine evil appearing on a grand scale, replete with fire, thunder and assorted prodigies of the senses. It may be, though, that where Ahriman is concerned, it is more likely to leak through between texts or in the empty spaces where questions should be asked. Ahriman numbs us before he crushes us.

Because we are all long-term inheritors of a worldview in which meaning is felt to be conditioned by the jouncing and lurching of particles or waves, and purpose is seen as a metonym for chance, we should not be surprised to find adversity nearby, in the most domestic of coverings.

The question, as always, is what to do about it, and this book speaks to that question.

Although Dr. James Dyson is identified as its author, Soul-Size is not a focused study by him or even a summary of any of his conceptual structures. Rather, it is a vivid mosaic of his thinking and his doing.

It is about service, “where the inner path and social responsibility become inseparable from one another.” (p. 10). It is “a stimulus that demonstrates how [Dr. Dyson} thinks, combines, and transforms, thereby bridging anthroposophy not only to Psychosynthesis but also to more mainstream psychologies” (Introduction, xii). It is about being in the space which is leading into the future as that future emerges, the space that is finding its way, for the self and the world together, to a restoration of the meaning and purpose that has been sucked out of our reality.

Dr. Dyson has studied, taught, and practiced medicine and psychotherapy extensively. He holds a Master’s degree in Psychosynthesis Psychology and he is certified professionally by the Medical Section of the School of Spiritual Science. He worked for thirty years at the Park Attwood Clinic in Worcestershire, England, which he cofounded, practicing complementary and anthroposophical medicine. He also co-founded the Association for Anthroposophic Psychology in North America (“AAP”), where he teaches today.

Soul-Size was edited by three colleagues associated with AAP, Christine Houston, Zheni Nasi, and David Tresemer. They have put together selections from Dr. Dyson’s Master’s thesis on Psychosynthesis, talks given by him in the course of various workshop trainings, and interviews conducted by the editors, as well as by Daniel Mackenzie on his podcast Above and Beyond. Many of these, and the thesis selections in particular, are abstruse and demanding, but we are very fortunate in the compendium they have gathered together.

Crucial not only to Dr. Dyson’s theory, but to his practice, is a recognition of the invisible physical archetype of the human, the Spirit Germ that informs the living, etheric processes of growth and bodily function, shaping the body rhythmically into an instrument of the conscious ‘I’. So is the perception of two streams of time, one that flows forward from the past to the future, internalizing as concept and memory; and another, hidden stream of will, that flows from the future to the past, “active within unconscious sources of life and sentience,” and embedded in metabolism and functioning in transformation. (p. 30) To these add an awareness of the unconscious crossing of the threshold that has disrupted all of humanity over the last century.

Consider the difference between a psychotherapy that operates on a foundation of such insights and one that does not even confront the concerns that provoke them. Think of a therapeutic protocol the basis for which is the mixing and matching of symptom to pill. This is the choice that is out there now—between a practice which sees its patients’ life choices as dictated by comfort and utility, and one that recognizes the active reality of karma and destiny. What is implicated is not only life advice, but the diagnosis and cure, rather than palliation, of real psychological and physical infirmities. How on earth did we ever get to the point where this is our choice?

Soul-Size demonstrates that Dr. Dyson has chosen his path of action, initiating the enormous task of mainstreaming anthroposophy into contemporary psychology, while at the same time removing his own preconceptions and habits by returning to free moments of beginning. He has the discipline to approach the elements of his practice on the most elemental grounds. In his Organ Workshop, for instance, he explores, with other psychology professionals, the feel, the texture, and the meaning of the kidney, the liver, the lung, and the heart. He senses their relation to the four elements and the four ethers.

His focus is developmental, and so there is special attention in this collection on adolescence, on education, and on the significance, in the emergence of the self, of precisely when compassion begins to manifest, and the Parsifal question—What ails thee?—is asked.

The most crucial of our developmental phases is the earliest, what Dr. Dyson calls the Sacred Wound. This is the moment of incarnation, when the eternal Individuality takes on physical form, when wholeness is dismembered and immortality is lifted. It is the fundamental trauma that nonetheless enables our personal mission to serve together with the mission of the earth, and to make the renewal of wholeness our profound, existential experience.

While the Sacred Wound is a necessary part of human evolution, our experience of it can be devastating. In therapy, the aloneness and the homesickness that comes of it has to be distinguished from what Christine Houston calls “the loneliness that comes from lack of authentic intimacy with others.” The pain of the one, recognized for what it is, may signal an entrance into spiritual awareness. The pain of the other is a call for discerning intervention by engaged and attentive professionals.

The late Christopher Bamford once said with a smile that the best characterization of anthroposophy he knew was “optimism.” And if there is a single tone that pervades these writings, that rises to a theme, it is hopefulness. Operating within the socioeconomic envelope that surrounds any courageous endeavor today, like the work of the Camphill movement, you have to have what Owen Barfield calls “a goodness of heart and a steady furnace in the will” in order to be able to serve in a way that is both original and consequential

For decades, Dr. Dyson has been doing what he was meant to do face to face with the Ahrimanic ice fields. He has made his way not around them but into them, serving as he learns. Personal and social awakening have been two facets of a single initiation, but one that is not confined to him alone. Those who have heard him speak ex tempore or have witnessed his work have been infected with his optimism. They will welcome this compilation. For those who do not know him, this will be a fine introduction.

We can all hope that there will be more to come.

Frederick Dennehy is associate editor of being human, a retired lawyer and active thespian, and a class holder of the School for Spiritual Science of the Anthroposophical Society.