Soul

Greek psyche from Homer to Aristotle

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on ancient theories of soul states that in Homer the soul (psyche) is what is risked in battle and lost at death, and is not tied to the activities of the living person. By the fifth century BCE the word had extended to emotions, desires, moral qualities and planning. The entry credits Pythagorean thinking with linking the soul to personal identity and an afterlife.

In Plato's Phaedo, the soul's resemblance to intelligible, imperishable things supports its immortality, and in the Republic the soul has reason, spirit and appetite. Aristotle treats the soul as the form of a living body and denies that human thought can occur without bodily organs. The Stoics described soul as a fine breath-like material, and Epicurus described it as made of atoms.

South and East Asian concepts

In the Advaita Vedanta tradition as presented by Shankara, the self (atman) is pure consciousness and is identical with brahman. The Stanford entry notes that scholarly dates for Shankara range from about 700 to 820 CE and that no dependable records of his life exist beyond his writings. The Buddha is presented as rejecting a permanent self (anatman), on arguments from impermanence and from control.

A 1996 study of Han-period sources by K. E. Brashier, read here from its abstract only, argues that the division of the soul into hun and po at death was at most a scholastic model, not a widely held popular belief. In the sources it examines, hun and po are part of a properly functioning body, and deficiencies cause distress and disease rather than necessarily death.

Abrahamic traditions

The Jewish Encyclopedia article on the soul describes three Hebrew terms in the Bible: ruach, nefesh and neshamah. It states that the soul was first conceived as bound up with life-blood, with Persian and Greek contact introducing an independent soul, and that the Zohar describes a three-part soul. It is an early twentieth-century reference work, and later scholarship may differ.

The Stanford entry on Aquinas reports that he treated the soul as the form of the body that is also subsistent, so that it survives death, while holding that bodily resurrection is still required. The entry on Ibn Sina (Avicenna, about 970 to 1037) reports that he regarded the rational soul as an immaterial substance that persists after the body. The sources reviewed do not cover Quranic or Eastern Christian teaching.

Modern spiritual and psychological usage

Harald Walach (2005) traces the Higher Self, which he says Roberto Assagioli, founder of psychosynthesis, introduced into transpersonal psychology, to Neoplatonic and medieval Western mystical ideas such as Thomas Gallus's spark of the soul.

Words rendered as soul

Several different words are translated as soul in English, and they do not map one to one. The Jewish Encyclopedia associates nefesh with the body and neshamah with the rational element. Aristotle's psyche includes nutrition and growth as well as thought, whereas the Stoics restricted soul to mental functions. Translating hun, po, atman, psyche and nefesh alike as soul can hide these differences.

No-self as a contrast

Anatman is usually translated no-self. In Buddhist philosophy as summarized by Mark Siderits, a person consists of impermanent, interdependent components, and the self is a conventionally useful designation, like a chariot named for its assembled parts. This denies a permanent self and differs from Advaita, where the self is identical with brahman.

Plural and non-dualist soul concepts

A systematic review of ethnographic literature on 55 Indigenous cultural groups found that many distinguish or connect the body with one or more souls rather than splitting mind from body. It reports that the Cashinahua separate a body soul (yuda yuxin) from a true soul (yuxin kuin), the Tlingit describe breath (x'aséikw) and mind (toowú), and the Inughuit describe a body, an immortal soul and a name. The authors caution that soul and spirit may not match the original concepts.

Soul self and higher self

The phrase soul self does not appear in the scholarly sources reviewed. Higher Self, as traced by Walach, comes from psychosynthesis and earlier Western mysticism. Modern spiritual writers may use both terms in differing senses, and the sources reviewed give no standard definition.

In religious and philosophical teaching

Adherents of different traditions describe the soul as the principle that actualizes a living body, as in the Aquinas entry. Ibn Sina is reported to have described a soul trained in philosophy as able, after death, to contemplate the intelligibles, a state he called happiness in philosophical terms and paradise in religious terms.

In Indigenous thought and counseling

The review of Indigenous concepts notes that these traditions are increasingly drawn on in psychotherapy and mental health counseling. For the Blackfoot, it reports, a normal state of consciousness means one's own soul is within the body, and altered states are understood as temporary soul loss. Practices responding to explained soul loss are covered on the Soul Retrieval page.

In transpersonal and spiritual contexts

Walach describes the Higher Self as a concept of transpersonal psychology. In a 2023 Pew Research Center survey, 22 percent of US adults identified as spiritual but not religious. The sources reviewed do not describe how soul self or similar terms are used in counseling sessions.

Claims about identity and survival

The Stanford entry on ancient theories reports that Pythagorean thinking attributed the states that seemed crucial to a person's identity to the soul, because the person was thought to persist after death. Plato's Phaedo offers several arguments for immortality, and Aquinas argued that the soul has no natural basis for ceasing to exist. These are philosophical and theological claims, not empirical findings.

Claims about consciousness and suffering

Shankara identifies the self with pure non-intentional consciousness. The Buddhist teaching reports that the conceit of an I and a mine is a form of ignorance that causes suffering. Walach describes the spark of the soul in medieval thought as an organ of mystical experience. Among the Blackfoot, the review reports, the soul's presence or absence marks normal and altered states of consciousness.

Who holds the belief

In a Pew Research Center survey of 11,201 US adults in July and August 2023, 83 percent said people have a soul or spirit in addition to the physical body. A 2009 survey of 250 Edinburgh students and 1,858 people in Liège found dualist views common, with religious belief the strongest predictor, and over one-third of medical professionals regarded mind and brain as separate.

A 2021 study across six populations with diverse cultural and religious backgrounds found that most responses were not dualist, which its authors read as support for intuitive materialism rather than universal dualism.

Philosophical status

The Stanford entry on dualism describes how an immaterial mind might act on a physical body, and whether conservation of energy bars this, as contested questions. Whether a soul exists is a metaphysical question, and the sources reviewed identify no study that could settle it.

Claimed weight of the soul

In 1907 a physician, Duncan MacDougall, reported weighing six dying patients. He recorded weight loss at death in several cases, deemed two cases unreliable or invalid, and noted that 15 dogs showed no loss, though his dog experiments were affected by drugs. He wrote that many more experiments were needed. Another physician attributed the loss to sweating, and a 2015 magazine account says the scientific community largely rejected the work as flawed. The sources reviewed include no replication.

Cardiac arrest and recalled experiences

The AWARE study (2014) followed 2,060 cardiac arrest events, and among 140 survivors interviewed, 46 percent had memories and 9 percent had near-death experiences. A 2023 follow-up found that of 28 interviewed survivors, 11 reported memories, none identified a hidden image and one identified a sound. Both are read from abstracts. Neither tests whether a soul exists, and a 2022 consensus statement proposes standards for such research.

Spiritual harm and abuse

A 2025 scoping review of 12 articles on clergy sexual abuse in the Catholic Church found that spiritual harm is described as a distinct phenomenon with spiritual, emotional and psychological parts. Such abuse is framed in the literature as an attack on the soul or core self. The review reports that the term lacks a consistent definition, and its scope does not extend to other settings.

Religious struggle and distress

A 2024 meta-analysis of psychiatric patients found that religiosity and spirituality were overall associated with lower suicidality, while distressing dimensions such as religious struggles were associated with higher suicidality. Most studies were cross-sectional, so the direction of effect is unclear. The abstract does not address belief in a soul specifically.

Care boundaries

The sources reviewed report no harm from holding a belief in the soul as such, and no professional standard for soul-related counseling was found. The AWARE authors suggest that fearful experiences during cardiac arrest may contribute to post-traumatic stress. Distress, abuse or thoughts of self-harm call for qualified mental health or medical care, and beliefs about the soul should not replace it.