ABSTRACT

Symbolic Mental Representations in Arts and Mystical Experiences explains how the individual’s conceptualization of reality is dependent on the development of their brain, body structure, and the experiences that are physiologically confronted, acted, or observed via learning and/or simulation, occurring in family or community settings.

The book offers support for Jean Knox’s reinterpretation of Jung's archetypal hypothesis, exposing the fundamentality of the body – in its neurophysiological development, bodily-felt sensations, non-verbal interactions, affects, emotions, and actions – in the process of meaning-making. Using information from disciplines such as Affective Neuroscience, Embodied Cognition, Attachment Theory, and Cognitive Linguistics, it clarifies how the most refined experiences of symbolic imagination are rooted in somatopsychic patterns.

This book will be of great interest for academics and researchers in the fields of Analytical Psychology, Affective Neuroscience, Linguistics, Anthropology of Consciousness, Art-therapy, and Mystical Experiences, as well as Jungian and post-Jungian scholars, philosophers, and teachers.

part I|71 pages

How discussing the structure, affective charging, and functioning of the body within the occurrence of archetypal constellations can support the developmental view of archetypes

chapter Chapter 2|11 pages

Exploring the origins of symbolic thinking

The intelligibility of the sensing and feeling brain

chapter Chapter 3|15 pages

PMA (Primordial Mental Activity)

The affective-somatic unconscious

chapter Chapter 5|16 pages

Affects, sounds, images, and actions

Addressing the developmental formation and activation of archetypes through the consideration of image-schemas and PMA

chapter Chapter 6|10 pages

The comparison of PMA to the fantasy-thinking mind

chapter |7 pages

Conclusion to Part I

part II|125 pages

Impressions and expressions of the body’s mind in mystical experiences and arts

chapter Chapter 9|28 pages

Witnessing PMA operations

The activation of archetypes in [neo]shamanic practices

chapter Chapter 10|10 pages

Arts and psychosis

Comprehending PMA expressions in their association

chapter Chapter 11|50 pages

Interpreting PMA in artistic creations

Primary metaphors on canvases

chapter |3 pages

Conclusion to Part II

part III|15 pages

Affects, image schematic compounds, and patterns of behaviour – links between body, concept, and culture

chapter Chapter 12|8 pages

Conclusions

Understanding affective, non-verbal matrices of the making of meaning

chapter Chapter 13|3 pages

Further research