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| Psyche: The personification of the human soul. ** In the well-known fable of the Roman writer Apuleius (ca. 125 - ca. 180), Psyche is the youngest of three daughters. She was of such extraordinary beauty that Aphrodite herself became jealous of her. The goddess then sent her son Eros (Cupid, in Roman Mythology) to make Psyche fall in love with an ugly man. However, the god himself fell in love with the girl and visited her every night, but forbade her to see his face, so she did not know who her lover was. On her sister's instigation she tried to discover the true identity of her beloved. When he lay asleep in her bed, she lit an oil lamp but when she bent over to see Eros' face, a drop of oil from her lamp fell on him and he awakened. When he noticed her intent, he left her. Psyche wandered the earth in search of her lover, until she was finally reunited with him. ~Elseviers Mythologische Encyclopedie. **The myth of Cupid and Psyche can be interpreted as the soul's longing for an eventual reunification with the divine through love. For Freud, psyche means mind and psychic refers to mental activity; many English derivatives describe the study of the mind and the healing of its disorders: psychology, psychiatry, etc. In psychoanalytic terms, the soul is the mind, the seat of thoughts and feelings, our true self, which seeks to orient our lives to our surroundings. |
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