The Code of the Soul

I often that mothers in trouble with your child ask me for advice on what to read. Thanks to my work - as an educator and psychologist - I realized that the greatest fear of a mother is to make mistakes. The power, sleep, the game, relationships with other children, and still the choice to prolong lactation, the decision to enroll the child in the nursery - the list certainly does not end here - are all areas in which the mother, on a more or less conscious, feels to be afraid of not doing his best and hurting your child. It happens then that we speak among mothers, that interpellino specialists or that we go looking for a book that illustrates a method that works. Tips and techniques, however,, once put into practice, reveal their limitations and seem insufficient to fulfill their task. The baby still does not sleep, not to eat, not to listen, to oppose and here, precise as a scalpel by cutting thin, doubt creeps: "Where am I wrong?”, and then "how can I do?”.

I chose a book somewhat unusual for a mom, because it breaks the mold of developmental psychology and pedagogy commonly known. James Hillman (analytical psychologist, disciple of Jung) in the book "The Soul's Code" addresses a key issue: the existence. The argument is complex, especially if we think that poets and philosophers deal with it for millennia! My challenge is to open a door in the imaginary mother who departs from common sense and that helps us to ask questions different from those that we do on a daily basis. Mothers come to me when they have one of these problems or more than one set: "My son does not eat, not walking yet, asks the sine of continuous, does not stand still, is careless, Shy, do not play with other children ". At that point I ask: "What should I do? How can I help? Unlock? Support? There'll be bad? Suffer? The provoke a trauma?”.

In "The Soul's Code," the author chooses an unexplored path that leads us to consider the point of view of the child. The argument is not the most simple, because he speaks of destiny and vocation of our children, terms that are not found in the texts of psychology and do not ever come out of the mouth of our pediatrician. So why occuparcene? Hillman argues that "flatten our lives with the way in which we conceive. We stopped to imagine it with a pinch of romance, with an air of romance " – Imagination? Romanticism? But what to do with the baby food and sleep! -. In support of these arguments, there are major philosophical ideas such as beauty, the mystery, the myth that they are a cure for the soul and go straight to soothe our fear of failure and to provide a trauma to our baby. Hillman invites us to stand on the side of the children stating that they too, already from very small, have in mind what to do with their existence, who have a vocation to express.

I gave the book to a friend, who told me that he found it too challenging – in fact it is not a work to be read in the light of the bedside lamp when, after a day's work, we put the kids to bed! - So I decided to analyze the themes of "The Soul's Code" in order to make them accessible even to those who do not chew philosophy and analytical psychology.

From an educator for twenty years and a mother for a few months, I came to the conclusion that we have the difficult task of thinking about our children, projected into the future, because children immediately start to go in against their fate and their vocation is revealed, in a more or less clear, already during the first years of life: become a sportsman? A researcher? A caring parent? Speak many languages? Will base its activity? It will pay to the other? Will live in a country other than that of origin?.

Hillman would say we have to imagine their lives "with a dash of romance". Only this will allow us to think of our children as unique individuals, giving us the feeling that the world wants them to be the same in the world, which is not only a desire to Mom and Dad. The Soul's Code does not give practical answers, reveals not the right method to solve everyday problems, but we'll have deep, and will touch the idea that we have of our children. The book is an act of love undisputed by the author in respect of the human race and I think that his reading is an act of kindness and generosity on the part of a parent against his son.