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She is, however, made of finer mettle. Willingly, she subjects herself to the Herculean labors devised by Aphrodite – her lover’s jealous mama – which include a trip to the fearsome Underworld itself. And thus, she wins Eros’ hand in marriage.

The soul finds love. The soul loses love. But by going deep into itself (the Underworld), the soul regains love for all eternity.

Could there be a lovelier metaphor for the healing of the mind (psychiatry) and the study of it (psychology)?

Or more poetic evidence of psychiatry/psychology’s early antecedents?

“Before there were psychiatrists and psychologists, there were shamans, priests and counselors,” says Jan Drucker, a professor of psychology at Sarah Lawrence College in Yonkers. “It’s not like it’s new. Talking about one’s problems and feeling better does have ancient roots.”

The two fields are quite distinctive, however. A psychiatrist is a medical doctor, while a psychologist has a doctorate in psychology. (The experts interviewed for this story are all PhDs.) A psychiatrist can prescribe medication, whereas in most states a psychologist cannot.

Cleaning the basement

But both disciplines have followed a similar trajectory: They began in the ancient philosophies of Greece and the Near and Far East yet did not crystallize as practices until the 19^th century. Prior to that, the treatment of the mentally ill consisted only of institutionalization. Among the exceptions were several medieval Persian and Arab doctors, who addressed possible emotional and physical links to mental disorders.

Since the 19^th century, the fields of psychiatry and psychology have undergone many developments. One of the greatest, psychoanalysis, is on the cultural radar once again with the release of the well-received film “A Dangerous Method,” about Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung.

It was Freud who developed the theory of the unconscious mind – that basement of repressed memories, feelings and desires – which could nonetheless be accessed through what was going on upstairs in our conscious everyday lives, particularly by talking with a trained therapist. Jung – who was a disciple of Freud’s for a brief (roughly five-year) but intense period at the 20^th century’s dawn – elaborated the idea of a personal unconscious into the collective unconscious, with its own myths and symbols. An example of a collective myth, from a Jungian standpoint, would be that of the miraculous birth, which you find in Christianity, Buddhism and ancient history (the beginnings of Alexander the Great and Caesar Augustus).