Understand the relationship of the myth of Eros and Psyche: Eros (Love, Cupid) and Psyche (Soul) that runs through the myth narrated by Apuleio in the Metamorphoses (2nd century A.D.) and which concerns sexuality, desire, and love.

Love in the myth of Eros and Psyche

In this article about Eros and Psyche, author Marco Bonatti wonders:

Can there be a Psychoanalysis that ignores the eternal laws of Love? Or, vice versa, is there a search for the eternal present in each manifestation of Love (Eros) and of the Soul (Psyche)?

Possibly the myth of Love and Psyche helps us to bring to light an old story.

The myth of Eros and Psyche

Psyche was a very beautiful young woman, admired enough to be called Venere (Venus). Evidently this could not go unnoticed and soon aroused the envy of the true Goddess Venus who could not stand that a mere human, mortal could be "worshiped" more than a Goddess and wanted to take revenge.

Venus charged her son Amor (Eros) to make Psyche fall in love with the ugliest and most miserable man on the planet, in fact a monster, but the prophecy took an unexpected turn. Accidentally Eros, who hardly ever failed to shoot an arrow (e.g. Freud's faulty acts), got hurt and became hopelessly enamored with Psyche, he of all people, who represented desire and passion and who had never fallen in love with anyone before.

Eros, who could not tell this to his mother Venus (Aphrodite in Greek mythology) asked his father Jupiter (Zeus in Greek mythology) what to do. Jupiter (Zeus), known as the God of wisdom, light and truth, first tried to eliminate all suitors by making them feel only admiration for Psyche, but never love (no one wanted to marry her) and second advisedEros to take Psyche to his Castle, away from evil eyes (for he knew that true love needed to be kept in the secret of the two lovers and not displayed).

Still on the myth of Eros and Psyche

When Psyche woke up in the beautiful castle, she felt loved by someone full of attention, but whom she didn't know, because Eros had covered his face (e.g. Maia's Fleece) so as not to reveal his secret and his identity.

Psyche, in her innocence and purity, did not need to see her lover to believe in love, for only the perception of this noble feeling brought her happiness.

However, doubt took over her heart when the two sisters (who envied the love between Eros and Psyche) visited her in the beautiful castle and convinced her that she had fallen in love with a monster and needed to discover and reveal his identity. It was then that Psyche, overcome (corrupted) by the voice of reason, one night when Eros was sleeping, took a lamp, approached her lover's bedside and pulled the fleece from his face.

The beauty of Eros

The surprise of Eros' immense beauty was such that Psyche dropped a drop of wax on her boyfriend's face, hurting him and waking him up.

Eros frightened ran away and Psyche was so shaken and desperate that she sought Venus' temple, asking for forgiveness and mercy for the Goddess who in fact hated her.

Venus, who was even more upset by this love, because she did not want to see her beautiful son with her rival, sent Psyche to overcome several tests, among them the most difficult, to descend into hell, enter the world of Hades, and bring Persephone the jar of eternal beauty (with the promise not to open it).

After many adventures and misadventures, Psyche got the precious jar containing the elixir of eternal beauty, but she disobeyed by opening the "Pandora's vase" and fell victim to a deadly spell.

The encounter of Eros and Psyche

Eros found Psyche half dead, already completely unconscious, kissed her and the breath of the eternal entered his girlfriend's heart. Eros woke up Psyche and again decided to ask her father Jupiter for help to take her to Olympus and finally make her immortal.

This is how the erotic pulsating energy of Eros (Cupid's arrow) entered Psyche's Soul and made it so that the two could never live and be separated for the rest of their lives. For now, Eros and Psyche were united for eternity on the Olympus of the Gods.

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Read Also: Origin of Homosexuality according to Psychoanalysis

From the love between Eros and Psyche was born Voluptas (eg. Volupia), which represents pleasure and intense satisfaction of sexual impulses and physical and spiritual desires.

Considerations on the myth of Eros and Psyche

The encounter between two worlds, the conjoining of the human world of Psyche with the divine world of Eros gives rise to Love. Love means: A, privative Alpha; MOR, death, that is, beyond death. In other words, eternal.

It is interesting to note that the tension between the earthly side and the spiritual side, between the real and the fantastic, between the human and the divine, produces a JUMP that allows the two characters to evolve, to open mental horizons, to perceive unconscious feelings and desires, to experience unexpected emotions.

For Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) our existence is defined by tension and possibility. The greatness of man is that of living this tension, of perceiving the anguish (highest category) between heaven and earth, between the finite and the infinite, and of choosing Being as a possibility between a finished life project (Earthly) and an infinite tension (Divine).

Psyche is infected by Eros

Unlike Kierkegaard, the leap between Eros and Psyche not only determines the supremacy of the spiritual individual over the rational individual, but the transcendent possibility of realizing freedom as tension (coexistence) for authentic existence. In a way, Eros is sublimated by Psyche and Psyche is infected by Eros.

That is to say, each character in Apuleio's myth ends up incorporating the function and characteristic of the other, showing that there can be no dualism (this or that, Out Out), but the cohesiveness of the feminine and the masculine, of heaven and earth (this and that, Et Et Et).

Eros lives in Psyche and Psyche cannot exist without Eros. It is the feminine and the masculine that make up our psychic essence.

Love is the sum of Eros and Psyche

In short, Love is the sum of Eros and Psyche, of pleasure and ecstasy, of transcendence and spirituality, of instinct and reason.

But the sum of Love is not arithmetic (in love 2+2 is not 4), but the sum (which is in fact an overcoming) is an alchemy that produces a leap and an absolutely unexpected result.

The erotic libidinal sexual istinct (unconscious) and the ego's reason (conscious) are transformed into a single story of Love. The present becomes eternal through the divine, which we see and perceive, and which is in us.

Love among primitive peoples

It is interesting to note that for the ancient natives of New Guinea, there was no relationship between sexual activity and pregnancy. Sex was just pleasure and discharge of libidinal energy, while fertility was first born in the woman's heart and then formed in the womb.

According to Mabel Cavalcante, there was a kind of magic, a spell that accompanied reproduction in the magical religious stage. Some primitive peoples (Aruntas of Australia) believed in the existence of child spirits in Tòtem that soon manifested themselves in the bodies of women.

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For the ancient peoples reproduction was a woman's prerogative and the prevalence of the Gods was female. The fertility of the woman was praised because as a goddess she inspired the fertility of the earth (Demetra).

Three kinds of love

Is it superb to live only autoerotic love (Eros), forgetting about more sublime forms of love like Philia and Agape?

We answered this question in the article on Narcissism: //www.psicanaliseclinica.com/sobre-o-narcisista/

Here it is interesting to remember that the Greeks divided Love into three forms:

Eros (represents the poor love that was born between Poros and Penis at Aphrodite's banquet and aims only at one's own pleasure and libidinal satisfaction; Philia (philos, i.e. friendship) is the love between friends and aims at an affective return. Agape (Latin Caritas) is the sublime and unconditional, unselfish and unmeasured love.

If Eros is pure biology, carnal love, pulsional energy and animal instinct, the other two forms of love are sublime, but human. So the search for pleasure, the need for possession and the satisfaction of sexual desire begins with the "I want" emphasis, but must pass through the sieve of the "I can" and the "I must" that joins sensuality and sexuality.

Love in the Psychism in the Myth of Eros and Psyche

If narcissistic love remains only in the first stage of Eros (autoeroticism and desire for self), eternal love is Agape (transcends need), we can think, in didactic terms that:

Eros (represents the biological animal part) - ID - I WANT (unconscious) Filia (human part) - EGO - I CAN (conscious) Agape (spiritual part) - SUPEREGO - I IDEAL /I WANT or I CANNOT

For Aristotle (and also for the Christian heir to Greek thought) there was the dualism of the "animal and rational" human being (man was essentially animal, social, rational and political according to his nature, habit and reason). That is to say, there was a separation between a lower Erotic love (sexual love) and a higher Agapic love (spiritual love).

Nevertheless, we need to overcome dualism for a unitary and polymorphous vision of Love that comprises the affective, instinctive, and rational parts.

Conclusion

In the ancient Veda texts of the "Upanishad", the Indians represent love with an elephant tied to a tree by a silk thread. This is the alchemy of love as fragile and invisible as a silk thread, but as strong and indissoluble to tie an elephant.

One of the lyrics of Ivete Sangalo's song says: "Because every reason and every word is worth nothing, when Love arrives.

In short, without Eros there would be no Agape, because superior love is generated by inferior love, without sex there is no man, and without man there is no spiritual love; for Psychoanalysis (but especially for Analytical Psychology) there is no separation, but symbiosis, that is, each part of the Soul is part of an all that precedes life (collective unconscious and orphic myth), they are not different stages of evolution,but represent the complex and totality of the human psyche (infragmentable) that presents, precedes, and passes through men from generation to generation.

This is how the magic of love between Eros and Psyche and the rescue of the eternal present happens!

This article was written by Marco Bonatti, living in Fortaleza/CE (e-mail: [email protected] facebook: [email protected]), PhD in Social Psychology - UK - Buenos Aires, Argentina; Degree in Philosophy FCF/UECE - Fortaleza, Brazil; Postgraduate in International Relations, Valencia, Spain; Degree in French Language at the Sorbonne, Paris, France; Currently isPsychoanalyst in training and columnist for IBPC/SP (Brazilian Institute for Clinical Psychoanalysis).