Soul: is a term many Jungians love, and I would consider it one of their most precious totems. The Jungian sense of soul is religious first and psychological second. Psychologically, it is just a romantic term for psyche (which is a romantic term for mind . . . so, twice-romanticized mind) . . . but it also connotes what I would call a sense of the autonomous in the psyche, that it is "animated" by something not-I. I have come to use the Jungian terms "soul" and "unconscious" almost always in quotation marks, by which I mean they are Jungian poeticisms or "Jungianisms" (as used by Jungians). Where Jungians still use the term "unconscious", I have been substituting "autonomous psyche", because despite what Jung said, the "unconscious" is not "really unconscious" . . . at least not thoroughly and permanently. Calling it the "unconscious" is a misnomer (that serves to spiritualistically project a ghost into the machine). It wouldn't be such a big deal except for the fact that Jungians have so totemized the concept and psychic object "the unconscious", that they struggle to think clearly about it as an observable phenomena anymore.
"Soul" is similar. As much as Jungians are gaga about "soul" and speak of it endlessly and with extreme reverence, I personally don't feel Jungians have a very strong psychological grasp of the phenomena they call soul. One of the representations of soul familiar to Jungians is the anima (sometimes they don't include the animus as a parallel "soul" representation). Of course, I have numerous disagreements with the way Jung and other Jungians have understood the anima which I needn't go into here.
Although the use of "soul" is problematic both within Jungian culture and when trying to communicate Jungians observations of the psyche to non-Jungians, I'm not wholly opposed to the use of the term as long as it is qualified. There is, after all, a history of the usage of "soul" that continues to inform its meaning, so phenomenologically speaking, such characterizations do have a place in modern psychology. That is, there is a psychic phenomenon that was given a great deal of attention over the course of human history. All cultures have some kind of term for it and observation of it beginning in premodern tribalism (where "soul" is especially important, perhaps essential to understanding early human society). But what is it these people have been describing and reacting to? Is it just a fantasy? A metaphor?
If you ask many Jungians, no, it is something wholly "real" and deeply significant around which all psychology should revolve. Jungians value "soul", but they still don't really know what it is and therefore can't explain its value to others. So that is a language problem, but the problem is rooted in sloppy Jungian thinking and its faith-based approach that eclipses any psychological orientation.
For me "soul" is more or less reducible. It is a significant aspect of what I mean by "identity". Sometimes the terms can be used interchangeably . . . but it depends on the context. More specifically, "soul" is the aspect of identity that is "instinctively" connected to a holistic principle of organization in the psyche that is the complex dynamic system of the life of the organism. I have continued to use the Jungian term for this principle of organization ("Self"), but I define it a bit differently than Jungians do. I don't disagree that the Self as represented in images can at times be seen as a "god image", but this is not always the case. More often, in fact, Self representations (in dreams, art, folktale, etc.) are very unassuming. It is much more common for spontaneous Self images (in dreams) to be animals or even machines or inanimate objects (that yet seem to be endowed with some kind of very foreign "mind" or "spirit") than for them to be anthropomorphic god images.
The distinct predominance of animal/natural/instinctual images representing the Self system is, I feel, essential data. It fits in with other data (which I won't digress on here) that suggest the Self system's principle of organization is very much like other naturally occurring complex dynamic systems . . . particularly in living systems. The fundamental principle could be described as "homeostatic" (some prefer the term "homeorhetic", since the "stasis" sought is a dynamic one). But that dynamic balancing is often experienced by the individual (or by a dream ego) as some form of counterforce or compensation . . . even "retaliation". Where the individual doesn't recognize the aggression of his or her position against the dynamic homeostatic principle of the Self system, s/he is likely to perceive the counterforce as an unsolicited act of aggression.
Where we are strictly speaking of psychic phenomena, it is extremely common and typical ("archetypal") for an intermediary figure to appear in symbolic tales, myths, art, and dreams that moves between and acts as the bridge connecting the ego and the Self (remember, we are talking metaphors only here, not psychic structures). The intermediary is unlike the ego, but not as foreign as the Self (which is experienced more as Other). The intermediary is often sympathetic to the ego but ultimately attached to or "employed by" the Self.
This intermediary is the anima or animus, and there is a typical set of narrative traits and conditions that define this archetypal category of phenomena. Historically, the animi have often been called soul, and although at times they are interchangeable, "soul" is ultimately a more abstract rendering of what the animi do and represent. And the animi are very specific representations (often anthropomorphic) of the soul. The animi are the relational connection to the Self, a portion of that relationship where very "human" emotions like intimacy, longing, devotion, etc. can be experienced. There are aspects of the Self system that are very Other and don't feel particularly "human" to us. They might be terrifying or they might feel mechanical or absolute or even deterministic. But the animi relationship represents the aspects of relationship with the Self that feel especially familiar, and where there is a good relationship with the animi, there is often a good relationship with the Self.
To return to a more tribal/communal context, the individual needs a good relationship with the "soul" in order to be connected to the Self's organizing principle. The Self is most commonly experienced in this context as the tribe itself . . . the essence, purpose, and value of the tribe as a collective body. Where an individual in the tribe experiences a "loss of soul" s/he has become dissociated from the functional relationship to the Self. That individual's identity, then, is not adequately connected to the homeostatic organizing principle that grounds identity in adaptivity (more of an inner adaptivity than an outer one).
The shaman (or psychotherapist) then comes in to treat the dissociation from the Self and help re-narrativize the bridge of the "soul".
And I'll reiterate that I am speaking poetically and metaphorically here without any implication that "soul" or "Self" are some kind of concrete entities, whether spiritual or physical. All of these characterizations come to us (often spontaneously) as representations of an extremely complex dynamic system reacting to various conditions with a drive toward homeostasis. Such "archetypes" are natural symbolizations of a process that does not have any actual personages or "splinter psyches" acting autonomously in them. I think the symbolization and anthropomorphism is a matter of our minds' natural confabulation and narrative sense-making machinery. But a psychologist can study the phenomena (patterns, trends, personages, narratives) as they are perceived. And the phenomena do form sets of consistent, typical patterns . . . the observation of which is perhaps the greatest empirical contribution of Jung's thought (even if his observations were imperfect).
