Systema psyches: A temporal taxonomy of mental phenomena
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: This paper proposes a hierarchical time-based framework for wide-ranging domains of mental activity, emotion, and behavior. Expanding on an integrated model of cognitive and emotional intelligence (i.e., Systema Temporis) that ranged up to the timescales of human memory (cf. decades), the current approach incorporates longer timescales relevant to sociocultural and biological evolution (cf. up to millions of years). Extended timescales are drawn from the Hierarchically Mechanistic Mind (HMM) model of the embodied human brain that proposes a temporal basis for four ontological levels of description, namely adaptation, phylogeny, ontogeny, and mechanism. The resulting model (i.e., Systema Psyches) furnishes real-time processes of the HMM with theoretical details relevant to cognitive and emotional intelligence. The hierarchical structure is also amenable to further theoretical assignment within domains of integrative personality as described by the New Big Five, namely the role of culture, development, trait psychology, and biological structure. An example is given of how Systema Psyches can be applied using predictive processing to differentiate mental disorders like depression and autism.
Institutions: Federation University, The University of Melbourne, Orygen
Language: English
Subfield: Cognitive Neuroscience
Field: Neuroscience
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $4,170
OpenAlex ID: W4416221832