A few years ago in a wide-ranging critique of therapy, I struggled with its excessive individualism, its neglect of the world. Why not, I proposed, define “self” as the interiorization of community? Why not give back to soul its cosmological importance, by definition embroiling environment and citizenship with our individuality? Why not grant attachment to be an ontological necessity, essential to the soul’s nature?
Then, relationship between people as well as between people and things would be given inherently, no longer conceived as external connections between separated atomistic individuals enclosed within their skins. Then we would no longer “make” relationships or “work on” relationships; instead we would recognize, realize, and refine what is already given. Then therapy could discover that transference merely exhibits this innate and irreducible attachment.
Once we have grasped that involvement is fundamental to the soul, we would be inescapably connected by definition, turning and twisting the threads of our fate with the souls of others.
— Suicide & The City, City & Soul, UE 2