Psymech

A Psymech is a specialist in cyborg brain work, blending the duties of a doctor with those of a cyborg engineer and technician. The name fuses the Greek root psy, meaning psychological, with mechanic.

Psymechs share much of their knowledge base with cyberbrainial programmers, but where programmers deal chiefly with code, Psymechs focus on the physical side of the craft, the storage and retrieval of data held in hardware. Cyberbrainial programmers are a profession the government screens, vets, and keeps under close watch.

A Psymech's core work centers on the cyberbrain, a structure that fuses living neurons with artificial intelligence around a main conscious core called a Ghost. That Ghost is shielded from tampering and decay by cyberbrain barriers and backup systems, all housed in a mechanical frame called a shell.

The Psymech profession draws on real thinkers referenced within the Ghost in the Shell setting, including Francis Crick's study The Astonishing Hypothesis, which examines soul and consciousness through the brain's perceptual and cognitive subsystems. Arthur Koestler's Ghost in the Machine similarly explores psychological angles on the soul and its relationship to reality.

In the Ghost in the Shell setting, the term Ghost is chosen deliberately to insist on some kept sense of purity for a person's core consciousness amid increasingly electronic and mechanical surroundings. A Psymech's job is to protect and maintain that Ghost as it sits within its hardware shell.