Love and Psyche

According to Carl Jung, the Swiss psychologist, fairy tales are stories developed around archetypal themes. 

The myth of Psyche and Eros clearly is about love with its trials and tribulations which ends with a divine union between Psyche and Eros (the god of love and desire).

In Greek, the name of Psyche means butterfly. The same word also means the human soul. From Jungian point of view, Psyche is seen as a personification of the soul that is yet to be initiated and is on the verge of an adventure quest, and Eros, the god of love, represents the passion which will transform through its relationship with Psyche.

In the story, Psyche is the youngest of three daughters of a king, and the most beautiful woman of her time. Aphrodite, jealous of the attention paid to Psyche, instructed her son Eros, to put a spell on her. Eros accidentally was pricked by his own arrow while putting the spell on Psyche. Hence, the god of love fell in love with Psyche.

Despite her beauty and because of the spell, Psyche was lonely, unwanted, and unwed.  Her father, the king, agitated and worried, asks the oracle what to do. The sacred oracle said that while no man would marry her, she would find a creature on the top of a mountain that would. It was "Death" itself and there was no way she could change her destiny. So it was that she headed for the mountain. 

Once within sight of the mountain peak, she found herself lifted by a gentle wind and brought into a beautiful palace with invisible servants who were providing her all kind of foods and wine and preparing her for bathing and dressing her up. Every night an invisible being was visiting her, treating her with such love, kindness and attention. This invisible lover was, in fact, Eros!

There are many layers of depth and meaning within the storyline of this myth. The beauty of Psyche is the beauty of the human soul, which if unexpressed, asleep, with no growth or transformation, is in a state equivalent to Death in an archetypal sense. The process of individuation takes place through a conscious encounter with the unconscious. This is symbolized by the male achieving individuation by confronting his unconscious, which is personified as a feminine anima and the female encounters her unconscious which is personified by male figures; her animus.

Psyche continues to meet her lover in darkness, night after night, signifying her surrender, blindly in love, and in the unconscious embrace.

We see here that Psyche’s lover is a god and she has projected her love onto an unknown face. In this story, Psyche’s union begins by being "in love", as with other human mortals. In the palace of Eros, she is enclosed in an unconscious state, possessed by love, in love with love. But in her humanness, she longs for her family and so calls for her sisters, who arrive. They are impressed by the beauty of Psyche’s palace, but they are also filled with envy and jealousy. Through their envy, they instill doubts within Psyche about the true nature of Eros, that he surely must be a monster to want to remain unseen, and that he only wanted to devour her in the end. Out of the lower emotions of jealousy and cynicism, they make Psyche unsure about the nature of this relationship. The sisters encourage Psyche to take a knife and an oil lamp to bed, so that when he is asleep, she can look upon him, and if he is a monster, she can use the knife to cut off his head.

Metaphorically, the sisters represent the hidden part of us that need to be integrated on the whole. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark (hidden) aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge, and therefore, as a rule, involves considerable resistance. 

Back to the story: The following night, while Eros is asleep, Psyche lights and lifts the oil lamp. This moment in the story is symbolic of the heroine whose act is about choosing knowledge and self-awareness by shining a light into the dark places of the unconscious. But to her surprise, Psyche sees the most handsome man she can imagine, the god Eros, and while she was watching him in awe and admiration, a drop of hot oil falls on Eros. Startled awake, Eros runs to the window and flies off.  Psyche runs after him, but falls to the ground, unconscious. When she awakens, she sees that the palace has disappeared, and she is in a field near her old home. Despairing, she goes to the temple of Aphrodite and prays for help. Aphrodite, jealous and revengeful, responds by giving her four tasks to do, tasks that Aphrodite believed were beyond the capabilities of Psyche. These four impossible tasks are the basis of her individuation process. Psyche dissolves into tears and feels all is lost; it is all too much for her. She knows she cannot accomplish these alone.

We can see from this traditional Jungian perspective that Eros is either Psyche’s inner masculine side or as a figure transcending her own mind. This transcendent figure (animus), can be seen either as a person in the external world or as a god in a transcendent reality. 

The first task Aphrodite gives to Psyche is to sort and separate an enormous pile of grain by evening, an impossible task! But Eros calls an army of ants, symbolic of Psyche's own mental faculty, to arrive and help her do this. They teach Psyche how, in the middle of confusion, to differentiate, evaluate, select and so, to bring order. The ants are representative of a primitive and a still, inner masculinity, a discriminating quality of sorting seeds, which she had to learn for accomplishing the first task.

 Psyche’s next task is to gather wool from a herd of golden rams. The river god advises Psyche to be patient and wait until nightfall. During the heat of the day their aggressive energy would be too great. After nightfall their masculine power is not so deadly. With the wise counsel, she is able to avoid direct confrontation with masculine energy in its aggressive, destructive form.

She is now able to carry some masculine power without falling prey to its negative and aggressive way. Psyche is gaining an understanding of Eros' nature, even though he is not there, and to understand him from within. She is acknowledging the potential of her inner masculinity, without losing her femininity. This process is now giving her inner strengths, courage, integration and wholeness, but there are more trials to come, and they are harder.

The third task requires that she must fill a crystal goblet with water from the underworld river (the unconscious), cascading down from an incredible height. To aid her in this task, an eagle sacred to Zeus arrives. The eagle flies high and brings back a cup of the water from the river to Psyche.  Psyche has now accomplished these three tasks. The eagle represents intuition.

The fourth task is one that she needs to accomplish on her own. In this task she must go to the underworld and bring back a box of magic beauty ointment from the Queen of the underworld for Venus or Aphrodite. The beauty ointment represents Psyche’s own struggle with her own sexuality and femininity. An inner voice now guides her and gives precise instructions on how to go to the underworld and then bring back the box. All the instructions are followed. Now she is given the beauty ointment by the queen of the underworld, but on her way back, she cannot resist the temptation - the temptation to use the ointment on her own face and become even more beautiful in the eyes of Eros. She opens the magic box of beauty and falls immediately into a deep, unconscious sleep. But Eros has been watching her, aware of her movements. He leaves his mother to go immediately to Psyche’s side and wakes her up.

Opening the box with the ointment was a necessary part of her journey. Returning from the unconsciousness and opening her eyes into love would let Psyche see that love has always been at her side and has never abandoned her. Psyche is now accomplished and individuated the four tasks within her and has surrendered back into her femininity and humanness.

 In our modern world, we may see examples of this task in our quest toward becoming more conscious. These can include spiritual practices of yoga, meditation, and therapies that lead to individuation.  The process does this by freeing us from our illusions about the self and the world, though it is a task requiring enormous energy and all our resources. It is a journey that once started, must be completed as Psyche was brought to the heavens and was given an immortal place by the side of Eros and made divine.  

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