RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE, ARCHETYPES, AND THE NEUROPHYSIOLOGY OF EMOTIONS

Established religions bridge everyday secular life with the numinous experience of the holy. Powerful emotions drive cultural expressions of archetypes in art, sport, and technocracy. Neuroendocrine triggers during bonding moments like mother-infant or adult attachment activate lifelong ties. The left cortex's cultural canon contrasts with the intuitive right brain. Brainstem switches alternate between the left's cool, extraverted drive for control and the right's warm attachment and dreaming sleep. Psychic trauma impairs flexibility, leading to alexithymic blindness to emotions and archetypes, resulting in substance abuse and narcissistic overemphasis on control.

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Abstract

Abstract. Established religions integrate a society's everyday secular realities with humankind's numinous experience of the holy. Powerful emotions nourish the cultural expression of the archetypes propelling the “ritual dances” of art, sport, and technocracy. During sacred moments such as mother‐infant or adult bonding, neuroendocrine triggers activate lifelong ties. The cultural canon of the left cortex contrasts with the intuitive right. Brainstem “switches” alternate the left's cool, extraverted, sympathetic drive for control with the right's “warm” attachment behavior and dreaming sleep. Psychic trauma damages flexibility with resultant alexithymic blindness to emotions and archetypes. Substance abuse and narcissistic overemphasis on control ensue.