Symbolic Mental Representations in Arts and Mystical Experiences

Giselle Manica is a clinical psychologist, a graduate of the Federal University of Santa Catarina in Psychology, with an MSc in Social Psychology from the same university, an MA in Mysticism and Religious Experiences, from the University of Kent/UK, and a PhD in Psychoanalytic Studies from the University of Essex/UK

1. Introduction to the understanding of archetypal constellations through the lens of Primordial Mental Activity. Part I How discussing the structure, affective charging, and functioning of the body within the occurrence of archetypal constellations can support the developmental view of archetypes. 2. Exploring the origins of symbolic thinking: the intelligibility of the sensing and feeling brain. 3. PMA (Primordial Mental Activity): The affective-somatic unconscious. 4. Archetypal imagery as mainly channelled by mental representations that mediate the here-now from partial simulations of the past, awakening or reliving the affectivity that marked it, and the background cognitive capacity that (by then) targeted its metabolisation. 5. Affects, sounds, images, and actions: addressing the developmental formation and activation of archetypes through the consideration of image-schemas and PMA. 6. The comparison of PMA to the fantasy-thinking mind. Conclusion to Part I. Part II – Impressions and expressions of the body’s mind in mystical experiences and Arts. 7. Proximities and distances between mental illness and mysticism. 8. Mystical experiences of the Ayahuasca consumption – the Brazilian Santo Daime doctrine and European neo-shamanism. 9. Witnessing PMA operations: the activation of archetypes in [neo]shamanic practices. 10. Arts and psychosis: Comprehending PMA expressions in their association. 11. Interpreting PMA in artistic creations: primary metaphors on canvases. Conclusion to Part II. Part III – Affects, image schematic compounds, and patterns of behaviour – Links between body, concept, and culture. 12. Conclusions: Understanding affective, non-verbal matrices of the making of meaning. 13. Further research.