The goddess Venus, envious and jealous of the beauty of a mortal woman named Psyche, asks her son, Cupid (the Greek Eros, “Love”) , to use his golden arrows to cause Psyche to fall in love with the vilest creature on earth. Cupid agrees but then falls in love with Psyche on his own, when he leans over from a distance to view her, causing one of his own arrows to fall forward piercing him.

When all continue to admire and praise Psyche’s beauty but none desire her as a wife, Psyche’s parents consult an oracle, which tells them to leave Psyche on the nearest mountain, for her beauty is so great that she is not meant for man.

From:  A Dictionary of Psychology   | Date: 2001  | Author: ANDREW M. COLMAN  | © A Dictionary of Psychology 2001, originally published by Oxford University Press 2001.
Eros n. In psychoanalysis, the life instincts, usually including both the sexual instinct and the ego instinct (the self-preservation instinct), the aim of which are to create and maintain the integrity of things. Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) was not entirely consistent in his usage of the term: in his book Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920), he used it as a synonym for libido: ‘the libido …