psyche1
/ˈsʌɪki
/noun
The human soul, mind, or spirit: their childhood made them want to understand the human psyche and to help others how does constant losing affect the psyches of young athletes?...
- The mind, the psyche, the soul, the spirit - call it what you will - also has to be returned to some sort of equilibrium.
- What did Charles Darwin have to say about crying because he certainly gave some attention to the emotional makeup of the human psyche?
- One profession deals with the conundrums of the human psyche through talking therapies like psychoanalysis or cognitive behavioural therapy.
Origin
mid 17th century: via Latin from Greek psukhē 'breath, life, soul'.
[M17th]
We associate psyche with things of the mind, but to the Greek spsukhē meant ‘breath, life, soul’, which then developed into the idea of ‘self’. This base is involved in the first element of the science terms psychology[late 17th], and psychiatry (mid 19th century from Greek psukhē and iatreia ‘healing’). Psychedelic was coined in the 1950s from psyche and Greek delos ‘clear, manifest’. The tale of Cupid and Psyche, a folk tale turned into an allegory of love and the soul, dates from the 2nd century ad, but probably has an earlier source. See also pneumatic
Rhymes
psyche2
/sʌɪk/verb, noun, & adjective
Variant spelling of psych.
Psyche3
/ˈsʌɪki/Greek Mythology
A Hellenistic personification of the soul as female, or sometimes as a butterfly. The allegory of Psyche’s love for Cupid is told in The Golden Ass by Apuleius.