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1995

An Interview with Thomas Moore

Alexandra Eyle
Syracuse University

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VOLUME XXX· 1995

SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY
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VOLUME XXX 1995

An Interview with Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie

By PaulJ. Archambault, Professor of French, 5
Syracuse University
The renowned historian Le Roy Ladurie dicusses his influences, his writing, his
career as scholar and director ofthe Bibliotheque Nationale, and his views on
Europe's religious, economic, and political inheritance.

Gustav Stickley and Irene Sargent: United Crafts and

The Craftsman
By Cleota Reed, Research Associate in Fine Arts, 35
Syracuse University
Reed sheds light on the important role played by Irene Sargent, a Syracuse
University fine arts professor, in the creation of Gustav Stickley's Arts and
Crafts publications.

An Interview with Thomas Moore

By Alexandra Eyle, Free-Lance Writer 51
Introduction by David Miller, Professor ofReligion,
Syracuse University
Moore talks about readers' reactions to his best-selling books, the contem-
porary hunger for meaning, his "nonmodel" oftherapy, and his own
circuitous path to success.

Dr. Freud and Dr. Spock

ByJames Sullivan, Doctoral Candidate, Rutgers University 75
Sullivan explains how Benjamin Spock translated psychoanalytic ideas about
adults into practical advice for raising healthy children, and how Freud's ideas
also influenced Spock's political philosophy.

Arna Bontemps's Creole Heritage

By Charles L.James, Professor ofEnglish, Swarthmore 91
College
James traces the lives ofBontemps's central Louisiana ancestors and the social
upheavals they endured before, during, and after the Civil War.
Peaks ofJoy, Valleys ofDespair: The History ofthe
Syracuse University Library from 1871 to 1907
By David H. Starn, University Librarian, Syracuse 117
University
Drawing on a variety ofsources, Starn presents engaging samples oflife in
the early days ofthe Syracuse University Library.

The Planning and Funding ofthe E. S. Bird Library

ByJohn Robert Greene, Professor ofHistory, Cazenovia 135
College and Karrie Anne Baron, student, SUNY Geneseo
Greene and Baron tell the story ofhow Chancellor William P. Tolley
willed the E. S. Bird Library into existence.

Belfer Audio Archive: Our Cultural Heritage in Sound

ByJohn Harvith, Executive Director of National 147
Media Relations, Syracuse University
Harvith reveals how romance led to his discovery ofthe Belfer Audio
Laboratory and Archive, and what he found therein.

Standing Where Roads Converge: The Thomas Merton

Papers at Syracuse University
By Terrance Keenan, Special Collections Librarian, 157
Syracuse University Library
Keenan describes the contents ofthe Thomas Merton Papers, focusing
on Merton's ideas about Zen Buddhism.

News ofthe Library and ofLibrary Associates

Post-Standard Award Citation, 1995, for Daniel W. Casey
Recent Acquisitions:
Research and Design Institute Collection
Virginia Insley Collection on Public Health Social Work
Donald C. Stone Papers
From the Collections
Two Poems by Robert Southwell
A Declaration ofLoyalty to Country, 1775
Introducing The Library ofModernJewish Literature
Library Associates Program for 1995-96

Dedicated to William Pearson Tolley (1900-1996)

An Interview with Thomas Moore
BY ALEXANDRA EYLE

INTRODUCTION BY DA VID L. MILLER

WHEN TOM MOORE was a graduate student in Syracuse Uni-
versity's Department of Religion in the early 197os, he was inter-
ested in ancient Greco-Roman mythology, N eoplatonic philos-
ophy, and Italian Renaissance astrology and musicology, as well as
global religions and depth psychology. He had come to us with a
background in Roman Catholic spirituality, and he had a talent for
languages. While living in Skytop housing, Tom built a harpsi-
chord, which he played beautifully.
I remember him as an exceptional student, and one who had a
wonderful collegiality with his peers. He listened very well. When
with him, I never felt that he had an agenda that he wanted to im-
pose on me or that he was himself stuck in. His openness was stun-
ning, but for all that he was not less critical.
I introduced Tom to the thought of the post-Jungian archetypal
psychologistJames Hillman. He learned from Hillman what I think
he already knew in an intuitive way: that pathology can be learned
from, that neuroses-whether individual or collective-may have a
purpose, that one can understand a great deal by asking what symp-
toms and sufferings want. This understanding makes Tom's work
so different from pop psychology, New Age, and self-help litera-
David L. Miller is the Watson-Leddon Professor of Religion at Syracuse Uni-
versity and was, with Stanley Romaine Hopper, one of the directors of Thomas
Moore's doctoral study while he was at Syracuse University. Professor Miller
teaches in the areas of mythology, psychology, and literary theory in relation to
religion. He is the author ofmore than sixty articles and book chapters and seven
books, the most recent beingJung and the Interpretation of the Bible.
Alexandra Eyle is a Syracuse University alumna and free-lance writer who spe-
cializes in profIles, especially about writers. For the Paris Review she has inter-
viewed the French "new novelist" Claude Simon and the poet W. D. Snodgrass.
She has also written a biography ofthe forester and conservationist Charles Lath-
rop Pack.

Syracuse University
Library Associates Courier
Volume XXX, 1995 51
ture, which is often eager to fIX us, to save us from the darkness and
messiness oflife.
Tom's work in his best-selling books, Care if the Soul and Soul
Mates, is affirmative without promising sweetness and light. He
does not promote impossible expectations which, when we in-
eluctably fail at them, produce shame, guilt, and anxiety. Tom
writes, in Care if the Soul: "Ifwe deny or cover up anything that is
at home in the soul, then we cannot be fully present to others. Hid-
ing the dark places results in a loss of soul; speaking for them and
from them offers a way toward genuine community and intimacy."
In a way Tom has not completely wandered away from his
Catholic background and experience. His secular works have a
confessional feel and function about them. This was already true in
his earlier books, The Music if the Spheres and Dark Eros. There is a
deep spirituality about Tom's work.
What people seem to think they need and want today is more
spirit. This is like saying that what a university needs is school spirit
or that what a country needs is national spirit. But spirit in either
the ethereal religious sense or in the rah-rah college or political
sense divides rather than unites. It is my college against yours, or
my country against yours.
Tom's notion ofspirituality is more like Jack Gilbert's poem:
The spirit dances, comes and goes. But the soul is nailed to
us like lentils and fatty bacon lodged under the ribs. What
lasted is what the soul ate.
Tom's soulful kind ofspirit sticks to the ribs. It has to do with body.
I think that is what makes Tom's books best sellers. People feel the
authority in the writing. It sounds real.
This is where Tom has carried on beyond James Hillman's in-
sights. Hillman had clearly distinguished soul and spirit. But Tom
reimagined spirit, not in the airy way, but in the manner of soul.
This is Tom's originality: to add psychological depth and a sense of
body to spirituality, and to add a reimagined spirituality to arche-
typal psychology.
Such an integrated vision comes as a solace and a help for the ba-
nality and boredom that so many persons experience today in

52
work, marriage, parenting, religion, television, and in the many
other aspects ofeveryday life. This life lived without imagination is
spoken to directly, but without accusation, in Tom's writings. He
makes an end run around our literalisms, our fundamentalisms, and
our political correctnesses. Tom already addressed this need di-
rectly in an early book, Imagination and Rituals of Imagination.
Above all, Tom can communicate complex and deep matters in
ways that are accessible. He is a teacher in his writing. Like the
nineteenth-century existentialist philosopher S0ren Kierkegaard,
Tom knows that in order to overcome resistances and habituated
ideas, good pedagogy has often to "wound from behind." So in
reading those teachers who know such a craft one finds that, before
one knows it, one has been changed.
To say that Tom communicates well and that he knows the art of
teaching may make him sound like a popularizer. This is not at all
the case. It is rather that Tom refuses the conventional notion that
there are some people who are thinkers and then there are the rest
of us. Tom assumes, with Aristotle and others, that all people are
thinkers and that they are thinking all ofthe time, even and perhaps
especially when they don't think that they are. It is just that there
are different vocabularies and lexicons, different modes ofexpression.
I think that the harpsichord and the music are a key. Tom writes
about difficult matters well, and he teaches deep ideas well because
he has a musical ear. He listens with imagination, and he thinks the
same way. So Tom writes: "If we could feel the seriousness of our
own imagination, we wouldn't need rationalizations in order to
make life decisions without guilt, and our decisions wouldn't feel
so incomplete if we made them soulfully, granting authority to the
intuitions and expressions that come to us from within."
From the music of the spheres to the dark depths of the hurtful
psyche, Tom writes soul-music.

53
An Interview with Thomas Moore
AE: How do you account for the success ofyour books Care of the
Soul and Soul Mates. 1 What have they touched?
TM: I'm not too sure. I hope it's because people are finally seeing
through the formulas that so many popular psychology books are
giving them. A lot of these books that look new are restating the
same old paradigm over and over again, looking for the fatal flaw
and the one solution. They are blaming the "dysfunctional" family
for the ultimate flaw. I think that flaw's a mystery. It's not a problem
we're going to solve. Theology says it's original sin. I think that makes
a lot more sense. There is inherent in our nature an imperfection.
AE: What sort ofresponses do you get from readers?
TM: I get about a dozen letters a week. A lot ofpeople say that the
books do not give them new ideas so much as affirm what they are
already doing. For instance, they could be making more money but
they don't because they are doing something that really matters to
them. People are sending me art pieces, slides, books of art, almost
all of them having to do with ordinary things, because people are
picking up this theme that soul is made or found in the most ordi-
nary, simple things oflife, the things we overlook, and that paying
attention to these things is the way of restoring soul.
AE: Clearly you're touching people. You must feel good about
that.
I. Thomas Moore, psychotherapist and author, earned his Ph.D. at Syracuse
University in 1975. He has given the University Library's Department ofSpecial
Collections signed first editions ofhis books.
The interview took place in the spring of 1994, at Moore's house outside of
Amherst, Massachusetts. It formed the basis for Eyle's profile of Moore, "Soul
Man," which appeared in the fall 1994 number of Syracuse University Magazine.
Since its publication, Care if the Soul: A Guide for Cultivating Depth and Sacred-
ness in Everyday Life (New York: HarperCollins, 1992) has sold more than a mil-
lion copies; Soul Mates: Honoring the Mysteries if Love and Relationship (Har-
perCollins, 1994) has also become a New York Times best seller. Another book,
The Re-enchantment if Everyday Life, will be released by HarperCollins in the
summer of1996.

54
TM: I do. Just last night I was in Northampton and spoke to 500
people at a church and afterwards signed lots and lots ofbooks. I love
hearing people's stories, what they're doing, how they respond-full
of appreciation. I write some books, and people invite me to come
and talk to them. I'm not a terribly social person. I'm kind of retir-
ing and private, so it's like a ticket to be in the world more.
AE: Even before Care of the Soul entered the world there was a
resurgence of interest in mythology, thanks in large part to Joseph
Campbell. 2 Why is mythology so popular?
TM: I really don't know. But everywhere I go people tell me
they're hungry for something. The word hungry appears over and
over again. They're hungry for language, ideas, and images that
have enough depth to touch whatever the word soul represents.
Our psychological language is not profound; it is mechanistic lan-
guage for the most part, structural language. Our images on televi-
sion and in the movies are superficial. They don't give us an
opening into the kind of imagination that moves the heart and
offers deep reflection. And, these days, the arts are so personalistic
that we can't find there the images that are big enough for us.
Everyone is always talking about the personal biography and the
intentions of the artist. But that is not deep enough. I read a lot of
film scripts before they're made into films. I see wonderful scripts.
But Hollywood transforms them back into the formula, over and
over again. As a result, as a country anyway, we are plagued by su-
perficial imagery and language. So Campbell comes along and pre-
sents the mythology of the world, and suddenly we're dealing with
imagery that really has some guts. And it doesn't take much. All
you need to do is present it and suggest that mythology has some
meaning in everyday life, and suddenly that's pretty potent. I'm
following up on that suggestion, certainly, but I don't do it the way
that Joseph Campbell did it.
AE: How are you different?
TM: He was interested in presenting stories from all over the place.
What he didn't do was take those stories very far.
2. Joseph Campbell (1904-1987), American mythologist and folklorist.

55
AE: Your approach goes beyond mythology?
TM:Yes.
AE: How does your therapeutic approach differ from the Jungian
approach,3 which uses mythology and archetype?
TM: First of all, mythology is not really at the heart of what I do. I
never talked mythology in my therapy hours; I never said, "This
must be the myth you're living." I deal with the dreams, images,
and stories that are given. In my writing I use Greek mythology be-
cause I know it. It helps me to have a strong image to work off of
I'm not interested in the idea, proposed by people who came af-
ter Jung, that one has to achieve consciousness through some sort
ofbattle with the unconscious, which is like a great mother holding
all things. I'm not trying to help a person individuate. I'm not try-
ing to do anything really but to invite the soul in and let it reveal it-
self I notice then that life does take on a deeper level of meaning.
Some problems may ease because of the introduction of soul, and
certainly there can be a change. But I'm not out to change a per-
sonality. I have no way ofknowing if that's going to happen.
AE: So you're making, as you say, a home, for all the elements,
dark and light.
TM: Yes.
AE: Can you tell us a little more about the shadow side? How can
you explain to our readers how "a morality adequate to life is one
sculpted in the presence ofshadow" or how "the psyche serves the
soul by allowing it to embrace more and repress less." I think of
Jeffrey Dahmer and say he surely wasn't repressing anything. This
isn't a goal I want to achieve.
TM: Freud and Jung and all depth psychologists have said that re-
pression fosters acting out. Jeffrey Dahmer was extremely re-
pressed. It is when emotions have been repressed so much and are
free floating that we have no control over them, like when a rage

3. Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961), Swiss psychiatrist, founder of the school of

analytical psychology.
comes over a person and they act out the rage and later say, "What
did I do? I was out of my mind." That acting out results from a to-
tal rejection ofshadow material. So let's say you're feeling rage. In-
stead of talking about rage, you might explore more integrated and
humane forms of anger and talk about being firm in life, having
solid grounding, and asserting your own individuality. These mild
forms of rage are actually very powerful, more potent than the raw
emotion. If you're going to work more imaginatively with the
shadow, you must embrace those things that seem objectionable by
imagining them more creatively. Our distaste for certain shadow
qualities leads us to reject them. Then, in repression, they remain
with us in an autonomous and destructive mode. When you deal
with them over time and weave them into your personality and
way oflife they are not destructive.
AE: You've said that you're not results-oriented, but can you tell
me how this has worked itselfout with your patients?
TM: I should say first that although my relationship to Jung is not
terribly central, I draw upon Jung just as I draw upon Marsilio Fi-
cino, 4 and Emily Dickinson, and others. But I obviously have this
general purpose of offering some guidance to people who want to
work with the emotional life, the life of the soul. What I'm saying
though is that each individual is so unique that I don't assume I can
know what's good for anybody. All I can do is hear what is being
said and try to enrich and deepen those stories that are being told,
whether they are stories about the problems of a person's life, or
dreams, or the family history. I try to hear more than what the person
is saying. I try to get the deeper stories-always deeper layers of
what is being told. Now when you do that, ultimately you begin to
live from a place that is closer to the heart, to what gives meaning. I
think part of the problem with us is that we live at a great distance
from that place-a distance from soul, you could say. My work is to
try to become more intimate with the life of the soul. As a result,
there is an increased intimacy with one's own life, a shift in the
level from which you live. A lot ofthe symptoms may ease as a result.
4. Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499), known primarily as an Italian Platonic philoso-
pher.

57
AE: You draw on Marsilio Ficino and James Hillman so much.
When you sat down to write, fired up with ideas, what did you
need to say that hadn't been said before? What is it that you,
Thomas Moore, say that we won't find in Ficino or Hillman?

TM: Drawing on others can be a kind of creativity. It's an appreci-

ation of the past and especially of people you really admire. You
take that inheritance and you give it a twist. As we say today, you
put a spin on it. And your spin is what counts.

AE: And what is yours?

TM: Well, in relation to Hillman, there are several things. Based on

what I know of him, he is not very positive about the spiritual life.
He's giving us an important contribution with his criticisms ofspir-
ituality and religion. What I'm doing is trying to offer a way to live
a creative spiritual and religious life that does not insult our intelli-
gence, that has psychological sophistication. A lot of times these
things are in opposition. I think that's a major difference between
Hillman and myself I do want to make a positive contribution to
the spiritual life.

AE: And Ficino? Not that I've read him.

TM: Not many have read him. He was a magus, an astrologer, a

musician, a priest, a philosopher, a translator, a Neoplatonist, and
an Epicurean. That's why I'm attracted to him, because I like to be
all those things myself One difference between Ficino and myself
is that, at least in the present time, I'm not the mystic that he was.
He had a transcendent side that I don't pick up on much. I might
one day. I would like to write a book on religion one day. But at
the present time I emphasize the earthier side of his work.

AE: And bring it into modern terms for us.

TM: His language is really very difficult to follow. It takes me for-

ever to translate his Latin. Even if you read a translation of his
work, it's not easy to know what he's saying or to see how it applies
to anything. Yet, I continue to find in his writing a rich and inex-
haustible source ofinsight directly relevant to our concerns.
AE: Let's talk about your background. Where did you grow up?
TM: In Detroit, with a brother seven years younger, and a very big
extended family, lots ofuncles, dozens ofcousins. My father taught
plumbing all his life. My mother is a homemaker who is still very
healthy and active.
When I was thirteen I entered a prep school run by the Servite
Order, a mendicant order founded in Italy in the thirteenth cen-
tury. In this order people did not spend their whole lives within the
walls of the monastery but worked in parishes and taught and did
all kinds of other work as well. The order was a blend of this in-
tense community life-monastic life-with an active life. We medi-
tated for an hour every day, had mass every day, and chanted the
office. We wore dark robes, even in high school.
The postulant year, the first year ofcollege, is the year ofmaking
application to orders-the full life of the monk-a whole year of
seeing whether you want to do this. Then comes the novitiate,
when you're a novice for one year. You don't leave the monastery
grounds. You don't even read newspapers or anything else. You
focus completely on the spiritual life. The following year you take
what are called simple vows, of poverty, chastity, and obedience.
After a year of that, if you don't like the life, you can get out very
easily. Then after three years you can take what they call solemn
vows, which are very difficult to pull out of, like a marriage. I went
through all that. I was doing a combined preparation for priesthood
plus the monastic track, and I went through solemn vows and even
came close to ordination in the priesthood. I had to get approval
from Rome to be released from the vows about six months before I
would have been ordained a priest.
It was a good leaving, for the most part. The official in charge of
my order in the United States came to visit me in my room-a very
nice man, a straightforward man. He had been my teacher for three
years. He said, "Look, we know each other, and I know what's go-
ing on. You're going beyond this life somehow. You're going in
another direction. It's very clear."
AE: How did your passion for archetypal psychology and Ficino
develop?

59
Marsilio Ficino, fromJeanJacques Boissard (1528-1602), Bibliotheca
chalcographica (library ofengravings of the most outstandingly noble
and learned men in all ofEurope). The Latin inscription
praises Ficino as an interpreter ofPlato. The book is
owned by Syracuse University Library.
TM: I didn't know anything about them when I was in monastic
life. One ofthe reasons I left was that I began reading Paul Tillich. I
had a very liberal open-minded faculty, and I felt that in certain
ways I was educated out of the order. But I had a classical educa-
tion. It was only at Syracuse that I discovered Ficino. He hadn't
been translated into English. So the first thing I did was take the
book of his that was most interesting to me and translate it for my-
self That became the basis for my book The Planets Within, which
is a complete rewriting of my dissertation. His book, a three-book
set, was called Da Vita, On Life, and the title ofthe book I translated
was How to Arrange Your Life According to the Sky.
AE: When you started reading non-Catholic authors in monastic
life, was this hard to do?
TM: No. It was a pretty open-minded place. I was also reading
Catholic authors like Teilhard de Chardin, aJesuit who was a pale-
ontologist and visionary who developed a theology based on evo-
lution. His view was so poetic and far reaching, for me it was the
beginning of deliteralizing Christianity. I don't know what else to
call it: deliteralizing. I was reading theology poetically, at more and
more levels, seeing the language as applying to ordinary individuals
and social experience and not just statements about some theologi-
cal world that exists outside of us. All of that was important to me
in the monastery. It prepared me to read Ficino-
AE: But it prepared you to leave-
TM: It prepared me to leave.
AE: So you left not knowing where you would go?
TM: Not at all. I had studied music since I was in high school. I was
writing music, playing, and directing choirs every day. While in
the monastery I had studied music at De Paul University in the
summers and taken a course or two during the year, so when I left
there I was just about ready to get a degree and I did. Then I went
to the University ofMichigan, thinking I would be a musician the
rest ofmy life. I got a master's degree in musicology. I wanted to do
a doctorate in music and philosophy. I'm still interested in philo-

61
sophical music of the Middle Ages, but they didn't see the rele-
vance, so I left. I knew that I wanted to explore things wider than
just looking at old musical scores. So I resumed the study oftheology.
AE: Someone pointed you to Syracuse.
TM: A professor of mine, Lonnie Kliever, who taught theology at
the University of Windsor, told me he thought Syracuse was a
place where I could thrive. I wanted to be free to study the arts and
religion and psychology all together. So I wrote a letter to David
Miller; I think that's how it worked-oh, and I guess I wrote
Gabriel Vahanian. 5 They asked me to write a paper about my ideas
on religion, and on the basis of that they gave me a three-year
scholarship, without teaching, that included tuition and living ex-
penses. It was great.
AE: So you really found a home, psychologically?
TM: Absolutely. It was a great education for me, exactly what I
needed. I couldn't have asked for anything more than what I got.
AE: Dr. Miller said you were a special student, you had this won-
derful classical education, you knew Latin, you had a passion for
ideas.
TM: There was another side to it, too. I got there and realized how
much I didn't know. I didn't know if I'd make it because I found
most of my classmates knew literature so much better than I did. I
had a classical education, but it was within a Catholic setting
-parochial in comparison to the learning of my teachers and class-
mates at Syracuse.
AE: You hadn't heard ofHillman yet or Ficino?
TM: No. I had begun readingJung, but I knew little ofhis special-
ized studies. I don't think I'd ever read a mythological story in my
life. I wasn't one of these people who got myth when he was in
5. Vahanian taught at Syracuse University from 1958 to 1984. He wrote The
Death of God (1961), among other books. Both he and Thomas Moore were
speakers in the fall ofl995 as part ofthe Department ofReligion's centennial cel-
ebrations.

62
high school or grade school. When I first went there I took a
course with Stanley Hopper in the poetry of Rilke and Wallace
Stevens. I had to give a presentation and I did such a bad job that
Dr. Hopper told me he didn't know if I would be able to get
through his course. He said, "You've got to do something." So I
gathered my forces and I wrote up a piece for him that he told me
was one ofthe best things he'd ever read about Wallace Stevens. So
I made a big shift and I got some confidence. But I worked very
hard at Syracuse catching up.
AE: So you left school, started teaching and writing, and eventually
you did that beautiful introduction to James Hillman's A Blue Fire.
TM: I did that when I moved to New England, while teaching part
time at Lesley College in Boston. One day I had lunch with Hill-
man-we'd been friends for years; I had met him through David
Miller. I'd been readingJung intensely with David's guidance and
then he introduced me to one of Hillman's writings, and I was so
taken by it that I started a correspondence with him while he was
still in Zurich. We discussed doing an anthology of his writings. I
told him I wanted it to be my book and yet completely in accord
with his wishes.
AE: You taught at Glassboro State College for a year and at South-
ern Methodist University for eight years, but were denied tenure.
Why do you think that was? They must be kicking themselves
now. They would have a lot of students wanting to take courses
from you now.
TM: I had a lot ofstudents then. At SMU I taught a very large class
in religion and psychology, but the faculty didn't seem to like it. It's
been a mystery to me. I was very interested in opening this area up
to more people. I saw that the department I was in was very small,
and I thought it would be a good idea to open it up to a large num-
ber of people and to teach this material in a rather relaxed way. I
was turning people away when I had 125 people in the course-all
the other classes were very small. For some reason the rest of the
faculty in my department did not appreciate what I was doing. And
I was never able to write in academese. They kept asking me to
write in certainjoumals and in a certain style, and I tried but Ijust
couldn't get myself to do it.
AE: In a way that has been to your advantage. As I was reading
your books I was noticing the clarity of writing-even when deal-
ing with complexity-and the empathy. You talk at one point of
Hillman inserting the third person in first person accounts-
TM: I do the reverse.
AE: David Miller said that what sets you apart from other thinkers
and teachers in the area is your ability to communicate.
TM: I would say that's probably true-and that's not widely desir-
able in the academic world. You do have to protect ideas from be-
coming too personal.
AE:Why?
TM: There's a possibility of personalizing things in a way that
makes all your discussion self-expression, rather than taking the
ideas as objects in themselves. There's a strong spirit in America
these days, in the arts especially, to be self-expressive. And I'm
working pretty much against that idea. One of my interests is to
find ways to present the arts so that they're not just about self-ex-
pression, creativity, and all that, but rather to work with internal,
archetypal, mythic ideas or some image that has been around for-
ever that is universal and that doesn't just have to do with this indi-
vidual person's life experience. For example, one could paint about
love, to take a big broad topic, and not have to bring your own
personal experience into it.
AE: Because love is a big, encompassing thing; we're in love, en-
compassed by it-
TM: Yes. It's not reduced to any individual's experience. So in that
sense I can see a certain validity to the academic position. But I
don't like it myself. The style I'm developing-it's not terribly con-
scious-has to do with using language that's more-this might
sound the opposite of what I just said-individual. In my writing I
am really trying not to use jargon; I don't use a lot ofpsychological
language. I try for the most part to use my own language, words I
like that I think are expressive. Instead of "unconscious," I prefer
to use imagination, memory, fantasy, the unknown, the repressed,
hidden, out of reach. Instead of abstractions I try to use more de-
scriptive words that give body to the unconscious.
AE: Your editor at HarperCollins, Hugh Van Dusen, told me how
Care of the Soul came into being. You had come to their attention
when you did the introduction to A Blue Fire. Then your agent
submitted your book proposal for auction. When you started that
book did you have a clue how successful it would be?
TM: Not really. I thought it might sell more than the other books
I'd written: The Planets Within, Rituals of the Imagination, and Dark
Eros. Altogether they had sold only 2,000 copies. So I really didn't
believe it would sell a lot. I thought ifit sold 30,000 copies I would
be deliriously happy, even though that wouldn't have matched the
advance. The only reason I felt the book might do well was because
HarperCollins put what for me was a considerable amount of
money behind it. Let's just say it was over $100,000, which was
huge to me.
AE: So you knew somebody thought it would sell a lot. How
quickly did you write Soul Mates after Care of the Soul?
TM: Very quickly afterwards.
AE: So you hadn't quite gotten onto the swell ofthe success of Care
of the Soul-or had you?
TM: I wrote it so quickly because it was a natural sequel to Care of
the Soul. I really wanted to write it. But I didn't realize Care of the
Soul would have such an impact until probably a year after it was
out. Even now it's a surprise to me when I go on the road and find
how many people are reading it, showing up at bookstores to talk
about it, and using it in their teaching.
I have had criticisms from writers who don't seem to get the
point of the book. In a major review in the Los Angeles Times, an
academic from N ew York called my work "psychology for the Lit-
tle House on the Prairie crowd." Another reporter in a Los Angeles
tabloid wrote almost a parody of what I am. Both of them had the
mistaken notion that what I'm doing is kind ofmiddle-class, privi-
leged. They think I'm saying, "Well, if you just get some antiques
in your house and buy a really nice door for your home, you'll be
taking care ofyour soul." My interest in caring for home and house
and neighborhood and things, the world we live in, they see as an
absurd reduction of everything to some very superficial thing.
Now that's a huge misreading. I think that what I'm suggesting is
quite radical, in an entirely opposite direction. I'm suggesting that
we bring together all this transcendent spirituality that seems to
have no effect on society and the incredible materialism that sur-
rounds us, which is a kind of a symptomatic, aggressive, obsessive
quest for a material world.
Making a soulful life is not a matter of money. It's a matter of
imagination. I'm saying that soul is partly in the materials of the
world around us. This is very Ficinian, by the way. Ficino says that
you're going to attract the spirit of whatever materials you sur-
round yourself with. So if you surround yourself with plastic and
polyester, you're going to have a plastic and polyester spirit.
AE: What special objects do you surround yourselfwith?
TM: Mainly things I'm attached to. A harpsichord. I have some
paintings, little sculptures and crosses I've had since my twenties at
least that I have around me when I work. I have paintings made by
friends-whether I think it's great art or not is beside the point. I
have my wife's paintings. All that creates an incredible environ-
ment for me. Throughout our house the wood has been carefully
done. We painted the house ourselves, picking colors we thought
were important to us. We have a Russian icon on a religious theme
that's very close to my heart and two or three Buddhas. We have a
studio for my wife to paint in and a place for meditation. So all of
that goes together to make a place that is not just functional.
AE: What are the important rituals in your life?
TM: To me a very important ritual is family dinner. We say grace
every night for the children, that is, a grace that the children can
understand. And just being together with the family for dinner is a

66
ritual that is simple but very important. All the religions I know of
have made a sacrament out of eating-the Eucharist. You go to a
service in India and there's food cooking as they're meditating, and
you have the meal afterwards. It's a very simple thing. Most people
do these things. What I'm advocating is doing them more, instead
of trying to figure out our marriages and personalities. If we could
pay more attention to our rituals, that would be the glue that
would hold us together. In Italy, people take a whole day to pre-
pare one dinner. They close down stores for hours every day just to
eat lunch. That's a ritual act. It's not that they need more calories
than we do. You go to Rome, and everyone's out on the streets at
midnight at these little street cafes. In America, no one's in the
streets except people you'd rather not bump into.
AE: How has your life changed?
TM: In lots of ways. I have a family. I didn't have a family before.
My daughter was born when I was 5 I. I struggled along financially.
I've never really worried about money, whether I had it or didn't.
Being an assistant professor was not financially rewarding. I never
did much there. When I left SMU and private practice I only
worked halftime. I did that for a number ofyears. One of the rea-
sons I wanted to write Care of the Soul was that I had experienced all
of those ideas in the therapy room. I had practiced therapy in my
own way, in a way that I thought was consistent with those ideas. I
wanted to write up the two experiences together, the intellectual
one and the experience ofyears ofbeing one-on-one with people.
What I'm saying is that my life changed in the sense that I was very
private. I lived and worked in a small village west of here, West
Stockbridge, and now I am traveling all over the place. I never did
that before. I received very few invitations to speak. Now I turn
down one a day.
AE: Tell me about your private practice. You don't have a degree
in psychology-how is it one can practice without a degree?
TM: When I was at Syracuse I took my electives in counseling psy-
chology. I had supervision, clinical work. I also had some counsel-
ing preparation training when I was in seminary. I didn't do any
Thomas Moore (© Nicolas Eyle, 1994).
therapy until I went to Texas. There is something called licensed
professional counselor in Texas. You don't have to be a psycholo-
gist, but you do have to demonstrate that you have had training and
educational background adequate to be licensed as a counselor. So
I was licensed. When I came to Massachusetts I didn't need a li-
cense; I kept my Texas license since they are often reciprocal, one
state to another. So I just practiced the same way I had always done.
Now I don't practice anymore.
AE: You could make the time, turn down engagements.
TM: I couldn't write and I couldn't speak and do television work
and all the radio interviews. It's too much. It's not just a matter of
having an hour free. It's a weight you carry when you do therapy.
You carry people's lives around with you.
AE: Do you miss it?
TM: Not really.
AE: It seems so integral to you.
TM: It is. But now I'm filling it in with all these other experiences
with so many people. Just this month I don't know how many
cities I've been in. And people come to me and they're very open
to me, telling me their life stories, and they're right with me right
away. I sign a lot of books wherever I go. So I have conversations
one-on-one with people. And all that conversation and all that give
and take and meeting people and being intensely connected to var-
ious groups around the country more than makes up for the ther-
apywork.
AE: Do you feel as though you've become our society's therapist?
TM: No (laughs). No, I don't want that. I want to be a writer who
invites conversation about some things. But I don't want to be any-
one's gum or therapist.
AE: Do you feel people hang that on you?
TM: Yes, they do.
AE: How do you feel about that?
TM: I ignore it.
AE: Going back to an earlier question about why you began writ-
ing these books, was it in reaction against the self-help books?
TM: No. Not at all. I have no interest whatsoever in being critical.
It's more positive than that.

AE: Was it at all in response to this urge that people have to tie
everything up? You write in the prologue, page six, of A Blue Fire:
"Soul-making is not interpretation, it is not change, and it is not
self-improvement-all modern attempts to get the upper hand on
fate and therefore to constrain the soul."

TM: I do try to move against the idea of interpreting things, ex-

plaining things, having them all tied up. Yes, I am speaking against
that but that isn't really the motive of the writing.
AE: So the motivation-

TM: It's multilevel, that's the trouble. Part ofit is a response to hav-
ing been a therapist for a long time, sitting one-on-one with peo-
ple, finding some very interesting things happening over and over
again. I thought it would be interesting to write up my approach to
that work.

AE: Interesting things-not just the symptoms being presented but

the way ofworking through them?

TM: Yes. The way ofworking through them.

AE: Presenting a therapeutic model?

TM: Yes. But the trouble with this model is that it's a nonmodel.
Therapy has almost to be turned inside out. I speak once in a while
to groups of only therapists. This week in Indianapolis I spoke to a
group of mostly Gestalt therapists. Two to three weeks ago I spoke
in Newport, Rhode Island, to holistic counselors. I admire the
work they are doing. I feel very close to it, having done it myself
for a long time. I do not write that we should stop doing therapy,

70
but I do suggest that care of the soul is bigger and broader than
therapy and that it is something we can do constructively every
day.
A lot of times we think of therapy as solving problems. But care
of the soul is not a problem-solving method at all. The tradition is
that soul does fine as long as it is fed and nourished regularly. I'm
trying to say there are things that will feed the soul. A lot of things
we do won't. We live in a society that starves our soul, so we have
to resist the culture somewhat to care for the soul. And if we
choose our professions and the ways we spend our time and our
homes in which we live, if we take care of our families and not see
them as problems and nurture our relationships and friendships and
marriages, then, if I promise any reward, it is that, if the soul is fed,
it probably will not show its complaints so badly.
But I can't even promise that, because from another point of
view soul is also a reservoir. It's always presenting new material. Ei-
ther from within us, intuitions, or from the world outside, we are
given new life, new relationships, new work to do. So I can't
promise that if we nurture our souls life will have fewer problems.
And yet caring for the soul has its own reward: living from a deeper
place. Ifwe did this we would then aim for more wisdom instead of
understanding, more character as individuals, rather than some
kind of improved product of the self. Then our work, our care of
the soul, would be communal; we would be more connected to
the world and people by the nature of the thing.
These are rewards, but they are not solutions to problems. They
are another context of living. If that context were set up, therapy
would look different, I think. Now we bring everything to therapy
because we think we have a problem to be solved. But if we were
all caring for the soul, therapy could focus more specifically on
those moments ofcraziness or extreme pain or extreme difficulty in
a relationship.
AE: Are you saying also that for many people therapy is the only
time they try to care for the soul?
TM: Exactly. I think if you were caring for the soul you'd have
millions ofpeople leaving therapy. You wouldn't do it so much. It

71
would be like you don't go to the hospital all the time. You take
care ofyour health (laughs).
AE: In your beautiful introduction to The Planets Within, you talk
ofastrology as a mirror ofsoul.
TM: Today people constantly make fun of astrology. But for cen-
turies the astrological awareness allowed people to recognize that
we are so profound in ourselves that we mirror that great universe;
we are that deep and that big. We are not clocks, we're not biology,
we are not chemistry and not even genes. Astrology maintains a
certain sacredness in the world we live in. We secularize the world
when we get rid of it. So I feel like a total anachronism talking
about it. I lectured to the Connecticut Astrological Association
about two months ago. They want to know how to solve a person's
personality problems with astrology. They're in the same place that
the therapists are, I think. Even the astrologers today don't have it.
AE: And your vision is that these connections, the Marsian, and the
Venusian pulls, are too enormous. They can't be shrunk down-
TM: Personalized.
AE: They can be identified as being in the person-
TM: But they're bigger than the person. Today I look out the win-
dows. I see all the green ofthe trees and plants. An astrologer ofthe
past, 500 years ago, would have said Venus is making herself
known. Green is her color. So we can talk ofour feelings ofsexual-
ity and sensuality, and ifwe knew, or reflected upon, the beauty of
nature, we might have a better sense ofour own Venusian fantasies,
our sexual fantasies. Because they're related to each other. Now I
can't make that a simple explanation. But take a few weeks to talk
about it and you probably could get deeper and deeper into your
own personal beliefs.
AE: So if I have that recognition, I might be able to relax a little
more?
TM: Absolutely. With that broader perspective you get less anx-
ious and personalize it less; you don't ask, "What's wrong with

72
me?" When I was doing therapy I was interested in writing up
what was happening. I was not personalizing those things, I was not
trying to solve problems. I was trying to offer an inviting place for
all of these feelings and thoughts to be present, to offer a deeper
imagination for them all.

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