Psyche is a word for the whole of mental and inner life, including conscious experience and processes that aren’t directly available to awareness.
Different psychological traditions give it different meanings. It doesn’t refer only to the thoughts you can explain clearly.
A dream. A mood you haven’t named. A recurring image. A wish that becomes easier to recognise when it appears in someone else’s story.
You are more than your best account of yourself.
That doesn’t mean some hidden explanation knows you better than you do. It means experience can be larger than the language available at a particular moment.
I AWAKE’s use of image, story, writing and bodily attention gives you several ways to approach that experience. A sentence may clarify it. An imagined encounter may complicate the sentence in a useful way.
The curiosity matters more than rushing to reduce everything to one theory.
Unconscious introduces what isn’t directly noticed. Analytical psychology explains the Jungian tradition in which psyche, symbol and inner life have particular roles.
The International Association for Analytical Psychology’s Carl Gustav Jung introduces Jung and the tradition he developed. It provides historical context for a word used more broadly in everyday conversation.