The term soul-making comes from the Romantic poets. We find the idea in William Blake’s Vala, but it was John Keats who clarified the phrase in a letter to his brother: “Call the world if you please, ‘The vale of Soul-making.’ Then you will find out the use of the world…”
From this perspective the human adventure is a wandering through the vale of the world for the sake of making soul. Our life is psychological, and the purpose of life is to make psyche of it, to find connections between life and soul.
The notion of soul-making demands more precision, however, when it is used by a therapeutic psychologist rather than a Romantic poet, for it is not enough to evoke soul and sing its praises. The job of psychology is to offer a way and find a place for soul within its own field. For this we need basic psychological ideas.
— Re-Visioning Psychology, Introduction