The Greek fable of Cupid and Psyche, like all fables from ancient times, is riddled with strange creatures, seemingly meaningless twists and turns, and an eventual happy ending. Yet it hides eternal wisdom in its depths. Written by Lucius Apuleius Madaurensis in the second century, the fable forms a part of his novel, The Golden Ass. It goes something like this – once upon a time, the goddess of beauty, Aphrodite, got news that there was a new maiden in town whose beauty surpassed even hers. She was Psyche, born a human and a symbol of the soul. In her jealousy, Aphrodite hatched a plan and sent off her son, Cupid, also known as Eros and the symbol of desire, to shoot an arrow at her so that she falls in love with someone hideous.

When he tries to do so, he ends up scratching himself with his own arrow and falls in love with his intended victim instead. Eventually, the two get married, despite Aphrodite’s order. However, Cupid instructs his bride to never look at him and he makes sure to leave her side before sunrise every day. But one day, curiosity gets to Psyche, and she brings a lamp near his face while he is sleeping. Just as she finds herself admiring his beauty, he wakes up and flies away. In the commotion, he is also injured by the lamp’s fire. They re-unite but not before Psyche goes through a series of impossible tasks while Cupid recuperates. The story ends with Psyche becoming a goddess, which was necessary for a credible union between her and Cupid.

But is this fable just that – a mystical sequence of events frozen in time? Or is it somehow pulsating with life, an all-too-human reality that all of us experience? Let me use the methods of the Swiss psychologist and psychiatrist, Carl Jung, who was born 150 years ago, to shed some light. Jung might suggest that the flying away of Cupid when Psyche looks at him shows that the pursuit of desire taken in a superficial spirit actually takes true desire away from us. In order to fully embrace the beauties and terrors of love, our soul must go through a series of challenges to truly attain that which we desire, as Psyche’s example illustrates. This is how we fulfil the divine potential latent within us all. While Jung’s work has gained a cult following, it can still feel somewhat inaccessible to the common reader. Yet the essence and application of his insights were dramatic, and epoch-defining. His thought is nothing less than a bridge between the modern condition and eternal human ideas.

While Sigmund Freud focused drily on the eros principle and how repressed desires may manifest in our lives, Jung went deeper into the nature of soul and what it may teach us about ourselves and our world. Together, the two formed a formidable pair for about six years between 1907 to 1913, during which they held intense discussions about the burgeoning field founded by them, psychoanalysis. However, the two parted ways when it became clear that they were poles apart in their understanding of the unconscious.

Born Carl Gustav Jung on 26 July 1875, in Switzerland, he had a less-than-ideal childhood. His father was a rural pastor, and his mother had an undiagnosed mental illness, which affected the young Carl deeply. He did not enjoy school and despised mathematics because it left nothing to imagination. In his 12th year, he was shoved over by a boy while on his way back home and fell flat on his face. He almost lost consciousness but was rescued immediately by kind strangers. After that, whenever his parents tried to send him back to school or get him to do his homework, he would have fainting spells. For six months the young Carl stayed away from school and immersed himself in nature. In his book, Memories, Dreams, Reflections: An Autobiography, he writes that this was a picnic for him. He could daydream to his heart’s content, conjuring up battle scenes and old castles. He collected stones, observed animals, and spent time reading in his father’s library.

One day, he overheard his father worrying about his future. ‘What will become of the boy if he cannot earn his own living?’, he heard him say. That immediately struck a chord and he realised why he needed to do better in school. From that point onwards, he became a diligent student who was also eager to be a man of the world. Despite this new found sobriety, he was still just as mesmerised by the natural and mystical world. So, when as a young man, he witnessed a solid oak table snap in two and a strong steel knife break into pieces for no apparent reason, he was puzzled but also introspective. His mother had been superstitious, and he later found out that that some of his relatives had been attending séances with a medium and wanted him to join them.

He did not join any of the séances., but he did not dismiss the coincidence either. Instead, he sought to understand the connection between such occurrences in a clinical manner. He called them ‘meaningful coincidences’ and in 1930 he began to use the term ‘synchronicity’ in his works. Despite his earnest convictions, however, he struggled to gain credence for his ideas in the world of academia. He began his book Synchronicity on a rather defensive note, hoping for readers with goodwill and open-mindedness who can ‘plunge into regions of human experience which are dark, dubious, and hedged about with prejudice, but the intellectual difficulties are such as the treatment and elucidation of so abstract a subject must inevitably entail’.

The book was an attempt at understanding fate in a statistical manner. Drawing on I Ching and the work of thinkers such as Arthur Schopenhauer and Johannes Kepler, Jung sought to find the empirical basis behind the workings of this invisible aspect of nature. For this, he analysed hundreds of horoscopes of married couples to see if astrology could prove compatibility. His results were interesting but inconclusive. An inspired blend of logic and imagination, he repeated these ideas at lectures in London and Switzerland. However, he found kinship in only a small circle of kindred spirits such as the physicist Wolfgang Pauli.

His real success came through his theory of collective unconscious and archetypes. As a psychoanalyst, Jung often had patients who had neuroses, depression, and all manner of deeply rooted psychological issues, some of which seemed impossible to solve. But instead of limiting himself to textbook definitions and methods, he encouraged his patients to share their night dreams. The unconscious spoke through dreams, according to Jung, in the form of symbols. That is why a huge part of his legacy lies in his interpretation of mythological and cultural symbolism from around the world. These interpretations were important to understand the issues his patients brought to him and it was a method that served him well.

He eventually formulated and presented his findings formally in 1929. According to him, an individual is not born a blank slate but carries certain unconscious impressions. The task of human life is for the individual to go through the process of individuation through which he or she realises a unique path in life. This can be done through archetypes such as the old man, orphan, trickster, anima, animus, and more. Much that we now take for granted – the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, the ethical framework for Alcoholics Anonymous, and terms like extraversion and introversion – are drawn from Jung’s work.

During his lifetime, these ideas were often seen as unconventional. Living through a period when secularism and the scientific temper were in their ascendancy, it was perhaps inevitable, too. To him, these societal changes were an important background behind the psychological issues that he saw in his patients. Because, while the pre-moderns had no qualms worshipping an invisible god, submitting to an invisible fate, and being amazed (or terrified) by an invisible supernatural, the moderns rejected the invisible altogether. In fact, they felt more emboldened by what they could create out of the visible. The invisible had little to no space in modernity.

In his book Man and His Symbols, Jung wrote, ‘as scientific understanding has grown, so our world has become dehumanized’. He explained: ‘Man feels himself isolated in the cosmos, because he is no longer involved in nature and has lost his emotional “unconscious identity” with natural phenomena. These have slowly lost their symbolic implications. Thunder is no longer the voice of an angry god, nor is lightening his avenging missile. No river contains a spirit, no tree is the life principle of a man, no snake the embodiment of wisdom, no mountain cave the home of a great demon. No voices now speak to man from stones, plants, and animals, nor does he speak to them believing they can hear. His contact with nature has gone, with it has gone the profound emotional energy that this symbolic connection supplied.’

Jung wrote those words in 1961 in his final days, which were spent in nature at his family home in Kusnacht, Switzerland. The book has essays from Jungians chosen by him that best elucidate his ideas about the unconscious, individuation, mythological symbolism, and the psychoanalysis of popular culture. Of course, Jung or any of his proponents do not propose going back to a primitive life, certainly not in this age of smart tech. But there is definitely a lot to learn from his ideas. After all, as Jung cautioned, the invisible never goes away just because we have refused to acknowledge it. Instead, it only changes its nature. The only way to deal with this invisible unconscious is to make it conscious, both individually and collectively.

How to discover the work of this tricky and esoteric writer? True to the nature of times, perhaps the best way to do that is to start with a podcast. This Jungian Life includes dream analysis in each episode alongside in-depth, wonderfully humane discussions ranging from the dilemmas of modern life to mythology and philosophy, all interpreted in the context of Jung’s work. Many of his students and admirers such as Joseph Campbell, Marie-Louise von Franz, and Joseph L. Henderson, to name a few, have had major and enduring impacts on the life of the mind. In turning to Jung’s rich ideas, modern people can foster anew a long-lost connection with the unconscious and engage with a significant aspect of what it means to be human. It’s a goal worth working for.