- The Totem of Consciousness
Stanley Keleman’s seminal book ‘Emotional Anatomy: The Structure of Experience’ (1985) maps the geometry of somatic consciousness. Keleman, director of Berkeley’s Center for Energetic Studies, explored the notion that physical human shape is interrelated with one’s emotional and psychological reality.
To me, this seems to be an obvious fact of life but for others, it is “a questionable pseudoscientific model akin to a kind of psychological phrenology”, as I read on Brainpickings. Of course, it might be impossible to apply scientific scrutiny to this model, but generally, I feel it expresses something that everyone is able to experience for themselves.
The illustrations are done by the artist and anatomist Vincent Perez. The images are sourced online since I don’t own the book myself.
The basic adventure of life is how a person organizes the form of his own existence, disorganizes what is no longer relevant, and generates new experiences to become the person that he lives and not the person that he imagines he has to be.
Stanley Keleman
