The psyche used to be associated with the human soul.
Psyche is a term that refers to the human soul , according to the dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) . The notion comes from the Greek language and is related to conceptual developments of ancient philosophers.
The psyche was linked to a type of energy of the human being that was associated with the earthly body and that, after death, was separated from it. From this idea, the psyche began to be represented as something autonomous from the person.
When the Greeks thought of the psyche, as that element that was separated from the physical body at death, they identified it in a very clear way: they associated it with a winged figure, of anthropomorphic appearance and that ended up going to Hades , where it remained forever adopting a ghostly shape.
There were many authors at that time who did not hesitate to express their own ideas regarding that psyche. This would be the case of Homer , who determined that it came from the mouth of the deceased.
The psyche and psychology
Over time, the concept moved away from philosophy and towards what we know today as psychology . Nowadays, it is usually understood that the psyche is that made up of the phenomena and procedures that occur in the mind .
The psyche, in this sense, allows the human being to adapt to the environment through a learning process. If the individual does not have a healthy psyche, this adaptation will be defective and the person will suffer various disorders.
Various functions are developed by the psyche: what is thought, felt and perceived arises from it. It can be said that, on the physical level, the psyche is regulated by the brain . In this way, unlike what was believed in ancient times, the psyche is now linked to the organism: that is, it is not an autonomous dimension that can be separated from the human body.
It should be noted that, beyond the physical, people have internal defense methods to protect the psyche, such as denial , sublimation , repression and other psychological phenomena.
Currently the psyche is analyzed by psychology.
The term in Greek mythology
It is important that we know that within Greek mythology there was a figure who precisely responded to the name of Psyche . This was a divinity that was identified with the personification of the soul.
Specifically, she was the youngest of three daughters of an Anatolian king. She stood out for her beauty, which aroused the jealousy of Aphrodite , who wanted to take action on the matter. For this reason, she ordered Eros , her son, to shoot her one of his arrows so that she would fall in love with the meanest man she found in her path, but as soon as he saw her he fell madly in love and that made him kidnap her.
Since then they lived a hidden love, which suffered numerous ups and downs, which separated them and which made Psyche have to risk her life in several tests to be able to recover her lover. And she achieved it, achieving at the same time the consent of Aphrodite and Zeus , who made her immortal. As a result of that relationship, a daughter was born, whom they named Placer .