This article was presented as an address at the Fifth Brazilian Congress of Fundamental Psychopathology, held in Campinas, São Paulo, between September 15 and 17, 2000. The main stage in the history of Early Greek thought in the progressive “happening” of the human psyché are discussed. The paper is divided into two parts. The first treats of the period of Ancient Greece, and underscores the happening of the psyché in poems of the Homeric tradition, in lyrical poems and, especially, in tragic poems, which the laid way for the importance that the first pre-Socratic philosophers gave to the concept of psyché in their way of seeing the world. The second part of the paper corresponds to the classical period, and emphasizes the treatment given to the soul in Socratic philosophy and the metaphysical meaning that Plato and Aristotle gave to the concept of psyché, as they placed it in their respective philosophies. The conclusion briefly indicates how psychic happening continued occurring in human history, and how, more than ever before, it needs to be re-considered today, to respond to the challenge that the contemporary world presents to the sciences of the soul.
Ancient Greece; psyché; Socrate; Plato; Aristotle