Gathering The Soul

About the Book

Gathering the Soul  is a true story of spiritual healing. Told in alternating chapters - one in the authors voice, as psychotherapist, and the next in the voice of her former patient, Mary Ellen - who later changed her name to Ariel - it traces Mary Ellens recovery from the effects of childhood abuse, including a severe eating disorder and a prolonged physical illness that rendered her for a time almost completely disabled.  

    Gathering the Soul  is an honest portrayal of Connie and Mary Ellens therapeutic relationship over a nine-year period, during which time Connie moved from working as a more or less traditional Jungian psychotherapist to learning about and working directly with the human energy field as a hands-on healer.  The book includes many details of this evolution, including the help and guidance both author and patient received through channeled guides and many other experiences which from a traditional psychotherapy perspective would be seen as extraordinary.

    What many people seem to be longing for today is spiritual healing - healing that encompasses mind, body, emotions, and spirit.  The old models are falling away, and a more holistic paradigm is taking their place.  The relationship and the work this book describes represent the cutting edge of this new paradigm, where the therapist/patient relationship is one of partnership rather than hierarchy, and where everything that happens within that relationship is seen as opening up the possibility for a deeper connection to Self and the Divine, where we are all seen as spiritual beings on a human path.

    Gathering the Soul  deals with the healing that can take place directly through the human energy field, and with non-ordinary reality, subjects that have rarely been written about within the context of traditional psychotherapy.  Although most of the names and places have been changed, and the author created some dialogue, much of the manuscript is drawn directly from Connies and Mary Ellens tapes and journals.  Mary Ellen has reviewed and contributed to the manuscript and has written a prologue as well.

     This book is written as a story, and as such will be deeply inspiring to those whose life experience may be similar to Mary Ellens, but who may not yet know that healing of even the deepest wounds is possible. It is likely to appeal also to those in the healing professions, especially those  interested in the integration of depth psychology and hands-on healing.

Author Biography

    Constance Simpson Myslik, MSS, LCSW, is a Jungian psychotherapist and healer with a private practice in Bozeman, Montana.  She is a graduate of St. Lukes Hospital School of Nursing, the Bryn Mawr School of Social Work, the Barbara Brennan School of Healing, and Society of Souls, a program in kabbalistic (Jewish mystical) healing. She has had extensive post-graduate training, supervision, and experience in Jungian theory and practice, as well as nine years of personal Jungian analysis. She lived and maintained a private practice in Princeton, New Jersey for many years, where she specialized in the treatment of eating disorders and worked with survivors of early childhood trauma.

    Connies interest in the mind/body split that is so apparent in people with eating disorders, many of whom have repressed the memory of the physical and/or emotional pain of those experiences, led her to the Barbara Brennan School of Healing, which teaches an understanding of the human energy field and spiritual healing.  Over the course of several years, Connie integrated healing skills into her practice as a psychotherapist, and then continued to expand and deepen this work by studying kabbalah, the ancient Jewish mystical healing tradition of the Tree of Life. Her approach now integrates Jungian psychotherapy, energy healing within

About the Author

Constance Simpson Myslik, MSS, LCSW, is a Jungian psychotherapist and healer practicing in Bozeman, Montana. She is a graduate of St. Luke’s Hospital School of Nursing, the Bryn Mawr School of Social Work, the Barbara Brennan School of Healing, and Society of Souls, a program in kabbalistic healing taught by Jason Shulman. She lived and worked in Princeton, N.J. before moving to Montana several years ago.