psychology with the psyche · psyche as instrument · psyche soma interaction · psyche soma problem
Within the depth-psychology corpus, ‘psyche’ occupies a position of exceptional conceptual density, functioning simultaneously as the subject matter of psychology, its instrument of knowing, and the very ground that makes knowing possible. Jung’s decisive move—designating his enterprise a ‘psychology with the psyche’ rather than merely about behavior—separates analytical psychology from the behavioral sciences epistemologically and programmatically, as Jones demonstrates. The Jungian psyche is neither reducible to consciousness nor coextensive with it: Stein carefully maps its boundary at the Kantian Ding an sich, while Pauli presses the physicist’s doubt about whether a ‘conscious-unconscious whole’ can coherently be called psyche at all. The psyche-soma problem generates its own literature: von Franz and Jung together argue that psyche and matter may be interacting aspects of a single reality, requiring the concept of a psyche that ‘touches matter at some point.’ Hillman radicalizes Jung’s position by insisting that psychology can only earn its name when it places soul at its center, making archetypal depth prior to all other fields. Behind all these modern formulations lie the archaic Greek layers—extensively excavated by Sullivan, Jaynes, and Edinger—in which psyche migrated from breath-and-life-force through shade of the dead to full psychological agent. The tension between psyche as empirical datum, metaphysical principle, and cultural-historical formation is the constitutive tension of the entire tradition.
The behavioral sciences and Jung’s analytical psychology are set apart by virtue of their respective histories, epistemologies, and definitions of subject matter.
Jones frames the psyche as the definitional wedge that separates Jung’s analytical psychology from the behavioral sciences, making it a question of epistemology and subject-matter rather than method alone.
, Jung’s ‘Psychology with the Psyche’ and the Behavioral Sciences, 2013thesis
Only a psychology which is willing to transcend personal limitations and allow the soul’s speculative function to operate as one of the psyche’s necessities can attempt to reflect the whole psyche and can earn the name ‘psychology.’
Hillman argues that psychology earns its title only when it honors the psyche’s own speculative depth, making archetypal adequacy the criterion for genuine psychological inquiry.
, The Myth of Analysis: Three Essays in Archetypal Psychology, 1972thesis
the psyche itself has a limit, and that limit is the point at which stimuli or extrapsychic contents can no longer, in principle, ever be experienced consciously.
Stein delimits the Jungian psyche by its Kantian boundary, distinguishing it from pan-psychism and anchoring it to the experienceable range of conscious and unconscious process.
, Jung’s Map of the Soul: An Introduction, 1998thesis
The only directly investigatable reality is the psychic reality, i.e., the immediate contents of our consciousness, which we then, ex post facto, ascribe to either a material or a mental-spiritual origin.
Von Franz establishes psychic reality as the sole directly accessible domain, making matter and spirit alike secondary constructions projected from immediate psychic experience.
, Psyche and Matter, 2014thesis
this hypothesis requires a psyche that touches matter at some point, and, conversely, a matter with a latent psyche, a postulate not so very far removed from certain formulations of modern physics.
Jung advances the psyche-soma interaction hypothesis, proposing that any non-harmonistic account of psychophysical events requires a psyche tangentially in contact with matter.
, The Interpretation of Nature and the Psyche, 1955thesis
Aristotle asks the question, ‘What is the psyche?’ It still cannot be adequately defined. He inquires, is there a collective or universal psyche, as well as an individual one? What is the relation between psyche and soma—between soul and body?
Edinger shows that Aristotle’s De Anima inaugurates as systematic inquiry the defining questions of depth psychology—the definition of psyche, its universality, and the psyche-soma relation—questions that remain unresolved.
, The Psyche in Antiquity, Book One: Early Greek Philosophy From Thales to Plotinus, 1999thesis
the spirit of psychology is lamed by materialism, literalism, and a genetic viewpoint toward its own subject matter, the psyche. The spiritual nature and purposes of psychology never emerge because the puer never emerges from the mother.
Hillman diagnoses mainstream psychology’s failure to grasp its own subject—the psyche—as a consequence of its captivity to materialist and developmentalist frameworks derived from the mother archetype.
, Senex & Puer, 2015thesis
Could these quantities be measured the psyche would be bound to appear as having motion in space, something to which the energy formula would be applicable.
Von Franz, following Jung, argues that the psyche possesses a latent quantitative-energic dimension which, were it measurable, would bring it within the scope of physical description.
, Psyche and Matter, 2014supporting
the psyche not only disturbs the natural order but, if it loses its balance, actually destroys its own creation. Therefore the careful consideration of psychic factors is of importance in restoring not merely the individual’s balance, but society’s as well.
Jung extends the significance of psychic balance beyond individual therapy to the social order, arguing that a destabilized psyche can destroy the very cultural structures it has produced.
, The Interpretation of Nature and the Psyche, 1955supporting
the psyche and its contents are the only reality which is given to us without a medium… how can a ‘totality of conscious and unconscious processes,’ how can a ‘conscious-unconscious whole’ be ‘given without intermediary’?
Pauli introduces a physicist’s skepticism about Jung’s claim that the psyche is ‘given without a medium,’ questioning whether the unconscious dimension can coherently be included in that immediacy.
, Writings on Physics and Philosophy, 1994supporting
Homer handed on to his listeners a general impression of what psyche was like. It was something insubstantial, dream-like, frail, and weak but able to become
Sullivan traces the archaic Greek psyche-as-shade tradition, arguing that the Homeric picture of psychai in Hades provided the template for psyche’s later emergence as a psychological agent within the living person.
, Psychological and Ethical Ideas What Early Greeks Say, 1995supporting
only it survived death. Unlike noos, phrenes, thumos… that perished with the body, it had a form of permanent existence, however unenviable in nature.
Sullivan establishes the uniqueness of psyche among early Greek psychological entities—its post-mortem permanence distinguished it from all other soul-forces and laid the ground for its eventual elevation to principal psychological agent.
, Psychological and Ethical Ideas What Early Greeks Say, 1995supporting
Psyche is the last of these words to come to have ‘space’ inside it… psyche or livingness did not lend itself to a container-type metaphor until the conscious spatialization of time had so far developed that a man had a life in the sense of a time span.
Jaynes charts the gradual interiorization of psyche in Greek thought, arguing that the concept acquired inner spatial depth only after the conscious experience of time as a lifespan had sufficiently matured.
, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, 1976supporting
Within the living person psyche is vulnerable in different ways. At Il. 1.3 the ‘anger’ of Achilles ‘cast many strong (iphthimos) psychai of heroes into Hades’.
Sullivan illustrates the Homeric psyche’s distinctive vulnerability and passivity within the living person, demonstrating that its primary function was as life-force destined for post-mortem existence rather than active psychological agent.
, Psychological and Ethical Ideas What Early Greeks Say, 1995supporting
psyche has become important not only when death approaches but during life. It is now associated with certain emotions: joy, love, pain. It is related to qualities in a person.
Sullivan traces the lyric-period expansion of psyche beyond its Homeric life-and-death function into an entity of psychological interiority, associated with emotion and personal character.
, Psychological and Ethical Ideas What Early Greeks Say, 1995supporting
These psychai appear to have undergone some form of purification in the underworld. In their reincarnation… they return to earth as people particularly endowed with authority, power, and wisdom.
Sullivan examines the Pindaric-Pythagorean doctrine of reincarnating, purified psychai, showing how post-mortem circulation of soul substance acquired moral and intellectual significance in early Greek thought.
, Psychological and Ethical Ideas What Early Greeks Say, 1995supporting
there is a circulation of soul substance, of psyche, which is born into the material world in the form of specific individual egos. These individuals carry manifestations of the archetypal psyche, and have the potential for progressive transformation.
Edinger links the Platonic doctrine of soul circulation to Jung’s conception of individuation, proposing that the archetypal psyche undergoes progressive transformation through incarnated individual consciousness.
, The Psyche in Antiquity, Book One Early Greek Philosophy supporting
Pindar tells his ‘dear psyche’ not to ‘hasten after immortal life (bios)’… Psyche then acts as an entity that can express desire, even excessive desires.
Sullivan reads Pindar’s address to his own psyche as evidence that, by the fifth century, psyche had become a fully interior agent capable of desire, aspiration, and self-directed counsel.
, Psychological and Ethical Ideas What Early Greeks Say, 1995supporting
Psyche can be a seat of awareness and endurance, one that can be given over to
Sullivan documents the archaic lyric expansion of psyche into a seat of subjective endurance and awareness, marking a transitional stage between its Homeric life-force meaning and later full psychological agency.
, Psychological and Ethical Ideas What Early Greeks Say, 1995supporting
something more radical is going on here, something that is no less than a total re-visioning of the nature of the psyche, which will… lead psychology into soul.
Romanyshyn reads Jung’s late uncertainty about archetypes as heralding a fundamental revision of the psyche’s nature, one that would reorient psychology away from science and toward soul.
, The Wounded Researcher: Research with Soul in Mind, 2007supporting
one view he seems to have held is that the soul is immortal. It dwells for a time in living creatures, endowing them with life. It experiences transmigration.
Sullivan outlines the Pythagorean doctrine of the immortal, transmigrating psyche, identifying it as a pivotal conceptual development that transformed psyche from a life-force into a metaphysical substance capable of moral purification.
, Psychological and Ethical Ideas What Early Greeks Say, 1995supporting
it nevertheless seems to me one of the foremost tasks of the human mind to labour without cease for an ever deeper knowledge of man’s psychic nature. For the greatest enigma in the world, and the one that is closest to us, is man himself.
Jung articulates the psyche as the preeminent enigma confronting human self-knowledge, grounding the entire project of depth psychology in the inexhaustible mystery of psychic nature.
, Collected Works Volume 18: The Symbolic Life, 1976supporting
the Greeks were so close to their psychic origins that they enshrined in their language the fact that the original state of the psyche is unconsciousness, which is a positive principle in itself.
Edinger argues that Greek etymology (aletheia/lethe) encodes a primordial understanding of the psyche’s original unconscious state, anticipating Jung’s formulation of the unconscious as a positive psychic ground.
, The Psyche in Antiquity, Book One Early Greek Philosophy supporting
in swoon states, where by all human standards there is every guarantee that conscious activity and sense perception are suspended, consciousness, reproducible ideas, acts of judgment, and perceptions can still continue to exist.
Von Franz cites clinical evidence of psychic activity persisting beyond the suspension of normal consciousness, bearing directly on the psyche-soma problem and the question of psychic independence from cerebral substrate.
, Psyche and Matter, 2014supporting
Jung’s theory is a powerful narrative. It might be correct in the way that a poem or a literary novel is correct; that is, as a whole coherent unto itself, all its elements in perfect relation to each other.
Jones presents the view that Jung’s psychology of the psyche functions as a poetic gestalt rather than a falsifiable scientific theory, raising the question of its epistemological status relative to the behavioral sciences.
, Jung’s ‘Psychology with the Psyche’ and the Behavioral Sciences, 2013aside
the paradoxical world of sub-atomic physics, with its accent on the rapid interaction and interchange of matter across the whole field, and relativity theory, resembles the psyche in its fluidity and ‘symbolic’ functions.
Samuels draws a structural parallel between the psyche’s fluid, symbolic operations and the paradoxical behavior of sub-atomic physics, supporting the plausibility of Jung’s psyche-matter interaction hypothesis.
, Jung and the Post-Jungians, 1985aside
A psychology which does not keep pace with the findings of the other sciences seems to me no good. I think that Jungian psychology meets nuclear physics on a fringe via the concept of order.
Von Franz argues that the psyche-concept must remain open to dialogue with the natural sciences, identifying number-as-archetype as the fringe where depth psychology and nuclear physics may converge.
, Psyche and Matter, 2014aside
Psychic life rests upon these organs; even the self is conceptually subsumed among the archetypes; and they are the operative agents in Jung’s idea of therapy.
Hillman positions the archetypes as the fundamental organs of psychic life, arguing that the psyche’s structure is constituted by archetypal agencies prior to all other theoretical constructs including the self.
, Archetypal Psychology, 1983aside