Psychology: the Loss of the Soul in Search of the Self

Today’s society has become entrenched between dynamic polarities; the search for the soul through the incorporation of spirituality, the development and overindulgence with the self, and belief and understanding there may be neither. In the modern Western, secular society, the soul has been replaced with the self and the measure of humanity is based on personal autonomy, self-sufficiency, individuation, differentiation form others, and self-fulfillment (Boyd, 1996). As the word “self” has become the modern replacement for the word “soul,” the rich history of the soul through the context of past traditions, cultures, religions through the vertical transcendence; a belief that hierarchically all things have their own origin in the domain of the sacred (Goodenough, 2001). As the culmination of embracing the spiritual within the ideology of the self has amassed a shift with modern society, the path toward enlightenment, knowledge, and the search of truth comes to fruition through the focused and concentrated efforts of a horizontal self-development and the abandonment of the soul for the self.