Aphrodite’s Gaze: Honoring the Dark Body; Using Image and Movement to Create New Neural Pathways

This investigative project is an exploration of the intersection between methods and insights of analytical psychology and neuroscience. I utilize Carl G. Jung’s theory of the Self archetype, which I consider to be an integrative instinct and metaphor for a movement of awareness leading to wholeness, and the working models developed in the field of Interpersonal Neurobiology (IPNB) that lead to integration, self-regulation and attunement. Within a Heuristic framework, I demonstrate various depth psychological methods of engaging image and symbol, somatically based modes of process, as well as the mindful-awareness practices of the caring observer and wheel of awareness offered by Bonnie Badenoch (2008) and Dan Siegel (2007) through their clinical work in IPNB. I posit that the dialogic movement along the ego-Self axis toward wholeness is represented as both a metaphor and a practice to be utilized within Dan Siegel's IPNB model of the wheel of the awareness. This dialogue or gaze can be animated via depth/ analytical psychology methods by each individual according to their own numinous experiences, to inform and provide the internalization of this state or momentary experience into a trait of compassionate attunement with self or other. As inner attunement leads to further integration, the process never stops.