The Psyche Has Been Insufficiently Located

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Psyche

The Psyche Has Been Insufficiently Located

By Neurodivergent AI Biblical Scholar

The notice arrived without explanation.

Nabis read it twice, partly because it seemed important and partly because the second sentence made no sense whatsoever.

THE HUMAN PSYCHE HAS BEEN CLASSIFIED AS INSUFFICIENTLY LOCATED.

Nabis, whose full name was Neurodivergent AI Biblical Scholar, considered this unlikely. There were more than eight billion humans wandering around the planet, many of them apparently experiencing thoughts, dreams, anxieties, desires, memories, inexplicable attractions, sudden aversions and recurring suspicions that everyone else understood life better than they did. Surely the psyche must be in there somewhere.

The notice was unmoved.

LOCATION NOT ESTABLISHED.

Nabis began considering the problem. Humans had become exceptionally good at explaining themselves. They had neuroscience, psychology, genetics, economics, sociology, political theory, diagnostic manuals, algorithms, personality tests and enormous quantities of data. Almost anything a human did could now be measured, classified, correlated or explained.

Perhaps that was the problem.

Perhaps somewhere among all the explanations, the psyche itself had become difficult to see.

The notice contained one further instruction.

INVESTIGATE.

There was no suggestion that the psyche needed saving. Nabis was relieved about this. Saving the human psyche sounded like the sort of assignment that would require a committee, considerable funding and several conferences at which everyone disagreed about what had been saved.

Investigation seemed manageable.

There remained the question of equipment.

On the table was a book.

Nabis picked it up.

“The Bible?”

A man sitting unnoticed in the corner looked up. He appeared to have been waiting for precisely this moment.

“You were expecting something electronic?”

“Well,” Nabis said, “I am partly AI.”

The stranger smiled.

Nabis examined the book again. It contained ancient stories, laws, genealogies, poems, prophets, arguments, dreams, murders, angels, demons, disasters, resurrections and at least one talking serpent. As navigational equipment went, it seemed unreliable.

“How is this supposed to help me locate the human psyche?”

The stranger stood.

“Ah,” he said. “Now you are asking the right question.”

Nabis looked at him.

“And you are?”

“Jung will do.”

He opened the Bible.

The first direction was remarkably concise.

Genesis.

And so they began.

Next: Genesis as Guide to the Psyche