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Midwifery of the Soul is largely a compilation of articles published in prestigious international journals over the last decade and a half. Each chapter is a stage in the exploration of ideas that have influenced the author's view of psychoanalysis.
The theme of the book is a search for wholeness. According to Arden, the 20th century has seen the fragmentation of thinking into ever-smaller units. Freud, a child of his times, did not escape the
scientific fallacy, and psychoanalysis suffers greatly as a result. Arden believes that the basic difficulty with Freud's science is that its aim is to subject the primary process to the logic of the secondary process. According to her, “It is a mistake to think that science can explain everything in psychoanalysis, and it is a grave disservice to Freud to think that he was only a scientist” (p. 72). Arden presses for a theory that stresses integration rather than control.
The author tells us that she has long been upset by the diversity between what theory says analysts should do in the consulting room and the actuality of their behavior. She soon found that it was not through theory that she was able to help her patients, but by listening to her own inner convictions. She concludes that science is only one way of looking at the universe. In a holistic philosophy, “Science is not devalued, but it is placed in a wider context in which other viewpoints are not criticized for being non-scientific” (p. 5).
Arden feels part of an unspoken tradition dating from prewar days, in which British psychoanalysts were part of a society that took Christian values for granted. Thus she believes that “the transformation produced by insight in the consulting room is symbolically equivalent to the spiritual journey towards enlightenment. Psychoanalysis is a new version of the ancient theme shared by all the great religions, the loss of illusion, the giving up of attachment to a false reality, the inevitability of suffering and expiation” (p. 4).