[size=150]Suggestions to the question: „What is »psyche«?“.[/size]
One of the least understood concepts is that of the “psyche”. Formerly the word “psyche” was used mythological and religiously and actually relatively well understood, since modernism it has been going through the propaganda mills, and no one can really say what it could be or even is. Misunderstood words or concepts are especially well suited for the propaganda and the establishment of new religions. Funny, isn’t it? No, that’s not funny, that’s fateful, isn’t it?
Brain ≡ a neural network. Psyche ≡ the subtle behavior of a neural network, subtle affectance within a mind. Mind ≡ the total behavior of a neural network, a particle of the psyche affectance.
To psyche could be discerned by excluding all that is not of it (the psyche) It's too general of a word to define in terms of it's self. It has to exclude the so called object of it's focus , thereby gaining it's relational meaning as different from. (it's self)
Yeah, what the Greeks, Hebrews, or Sumerians might have meant by a word within their understanding might not even exist in our understanding of today. Their epistemology doesn’t actually match ours. Translators have to give an estimate and guess when translating (which I have often found to be incorrect).
In the case of a “unicorn”, it is understood today to represent a magical flying horse with a single horn sticking out of its head. But actually, that was just the symbol for a unicorn. What they were referring to was a unified, common understanding and belief (the horse) such that normal divisive mental games were ineffective. In a sense, Christianity was a type of unicorn, and Catholicism still is.
So no telling what the Greeks really meant when they used the word that people today translate into “psyche”. The existing thing in accord to our current understanding of a mind, is as I stated. But we understand far more detail concerning a mind then their understanding had room for.
To me it is objective subjective (first person). Meaning it is the structures of the the experiencer/experiencing. Something on the way to ‘cognition’ and ‘cognitive processes’ though not with all the deadness I associate with those terms. It’s not phenomenlogy, though phenomenology might be contributing information. Phenomenology is subjective subjective. 1st person accounts of 1st person experience. This is more like 3rd person accounts of patterns in experience and action of the experiencer. Unconcsious and not.
Soul would be something less structures, less about patterns over time, but simply the non-corporeal self ontologically. Should one believe in such things.
‘Mind’ seems to me to deal with more the conscious experiencing and its contents.
That problem exists between languages even today. One doesn’t have to go back to the ancient scripts to encounter words which are virtually untranslatable to another language. Words are rooted in both time and ethnicity whose meanings can seldom be carried over intact to another.
With the Ancients there was more Poetry contained in every thought and word which makes it even more difficult to transcribe equal to what was contained in the original.
There is a kind of truth subtraction in every translation more or less severe based on semantic propinquity.
Originally - in Ancient Greek - “psyche” had the meaning of “breath”, “breeze”, “soul”, than it had remained as “soul” for about 2000 years. Since modern times it has been changing to everything you want, and that is very much different from the older meaning.
Our current (modern Western) understanding of “psyche” may well be entirely wrong. “Psyche” has changed from a mythological, religious, and idealistic word and concept to a purely (idealistic) ideological, propagandistic word and concept.
Well, it wouldn’t be “wrong”, merely different from their use of the word. But in reality, it is the same as their use.
In your list of related words, you left out two of the most significant words; “spirit” and “behavior”.
“psyche”, “breath”, “breeze”, “soul”, “spirit”, “behavior”, and “psychology” are all related.
In all ancient scriptural texts, those words are interchangeable.
The meaning of “psyche” is not what changed over the years, but rather the distinction of the other words, as well as the typical “gutter-fall” of their meanings. The lower class misunderstandings and mispronunciation (“gutter-fall”) replaces the upper class understandings and pronunciation after a rebellion or strong power shift.
Note that the “proper French” of today has a great many silent letters completely left out from the spelling of their words. Before the French revolution, that wasn’t the case. What has become “proper French” was their guttural French before the revolution. When you chop off the heads of everyone who can speak properly (the noble class), people stop speaking properly and proper because the former guttural. Germany had a similar incident causing the “high German consonant shift” as the German aristocracy boldly demanded distinct pronunciation, much as the English aristocracy still do. And if the British were to have a similar revolution, the gutter-fall slang of Cardiff would become “proper English”. And in fact, such a shift is being designed and promoted and in the USA as well (combined with Ebonics, Spanish, French, and Bronx English). Today, such things are designed, not evolution of the language, but manevolution of all things.
In ancient scriptures what was later called “spirit” was described as “the invisible force within, as a breath, expressed as ha or ah”. And still today in Hebrew the letters “ha” and “ah” in all of the words stand for “spirit”. “Allah” (All-ah) means “the All-spirit”, or the total spirit of all things combined. But today, we do not give the behavior of something an ontological form of its own, as they did. We say, “The one thing, body and its behavior”, not “Two things of its body and its spirit/behavior”. That helps to keep new secular science separate from old religion.
And although there is a subtle distinction between “spirit” and “soul”, they get conflated quite often, even in scriptures. And the “gutter-fall” of their meanings was, and now is, different than what it was back then. The lower class only understood “spirit” as some ghostly gossamer being that floats down dark hallways. But in scriptures and in the ancient languages, it merely meant ones behavior or their psychology. Monks are psychologists in training but using an older ontological construct that we now refer to as “religious” (the psychology of yesteryear).
So to tie it all back together (without getting “religious” by including “spirit”), I stick by this;
Psyche ≡ the subtle behavior of a neural network, subtle affectance within a mind[size=85], the spirit.[/size]
And the words “breath” and “breeze” are kept distinct from the notion of spirit or behavior. And the word “soul” is referring to the foundation of their spirit. I use the word “soul” to refer to the very definition of what a person is, different than their current spirit might be.
Instead of “anorganic things” one could also say “non-biological beings”, instead of “biologycla body” one could also say “living beings” (in an exvlusive biological sense).
In any case, the meaning of “psyche” has changed because the zeitgeist and especially the social general environment by industrialisation / mechanisation / automatisation have changed. There is a correlation between them.
In general I use “psyche” in the sense of "not really organic and also not really spiritual (geistig)". Psychology can be found somewhere between sociobiology, or mere sociology, and philosophy. I often prefer “semiotics” especially when I put the focus on the signs or characters - they give nore Information.
No. That’s not proved, and as long as it is not proved one can say that the definition of “psyche” is unproven and probably false.
No. That’s not true because the psychology has no object (because the definition of “psyche” is unproven and probably false - see above).
No. There is no psychological “nature” because there is no psychlogical object (for research and so on - see above).
In English the word “soul” should be used synonymously and later replace the word “psyche” because “psyche” is not defined (see above) and the definition of “soul” is able to restrict the exaggerated, megalomaniac and therefore misleading claims of the “psyche”.
No other words or concepts are more misused for propganda, agitation, oppression, elimination, etc. than (1.) “psyche” (incl. “psychological”, “psychology”, “psychiatric”, “psychiatry”, and so on), (2.) “social” (incl. “sociological”, “sociology”, and so on), and (3.) “eco” (incl. “ecological”, “ecology”, but also “economic[al]”, “economy”, “economics”, and so on).