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COGITOCENTRIC PSYCHOLOGY: A NEW APPROACH AS A POSSIBILI-

TY FOR PSYCHIC ORGANIZATION

Emanuel da Silva Ripardo1

Nicholas Diógenes Ripardo2

Abstract: This study proposes a critical review of the foundations of psychoanalysis, replacing

the traditional conception of the unconscious with the notion of Psychic Veiling, a phenomenon

responsible for obscuring the affective experience due to excess cognition. It also introduces the

concept of Cogitocentrism, understood as the domination of thought over experience, a condition that

leads to the alienation of subjectivity. In order to broaden this understanding, the theory of Psyches is

presented, understood as dynamic entities that operate between the Implicit Ego and the Explicit Ego,

structuring the psyche as a living and continuous ow. Based on contemporary phenomenological

and critical reections, this work proposes paths for a psychology oriented towards the integration of

feeling, thinking and existing, offering a renewed perspective on clinical and theoretical processes.

Keywords: Unconscious, Psychic Veiling, Ego Matrix, Psyches, Implicit Ego, Cogitocentric

Psychology.

Introduction

This article proposes an epistemological break with the classical paradigms of psychoanalysis,

radically shifting the axis of understanding of the psyche. Instead of conceiving the unconscious as

a deposit of repressed desires or a structure of meaning subordinated to language, as postulated by

1 Graduated in Psychology from the University of Fortaleza (Unifor)

2 Undergraduate in Psychology from the University of Fortaleza (Unifor)

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Freud (2019) and Lacan (1985), this approach proposes a profound reconceptualization: what has

historically been called the “unconscious” is not a delimited and subterranean instance, but a living,

pulsating and, at the same time, Veiled. This layer does not reside in a basement of the soul, nor

is it structured by the absence of the signier; it is in full operation in the silence, hesitation and

discursive automation of the subject who, without knowing it, has learned not to listen to his own

fragments. Therefore, the sentence that started the idea of this new theoretical proposal is direct:

The Unconscious does not exist! What exists is the consciousness that is unconscious of a “greater”

consciousness. This consciousness never sleeps, is never unconscious. It is our social ego made for the

world that is unaware of this “greater” self.

This phrase should not be understood in a trivial or denialist way, but as an epistemological

critique that reverberates in the philosophical and psychoanalytic tradition, breaking with classical

metapsychology. It is afrmed that the subject ceases to be a mere interpreter of hidden contents,

starting to congure himself as an active dancer in the choreographies of his own affective experiences,

in a constant ow of creation and adaptation.

From this posture, the concept of Psychic Veiling is introduced, a continuous and defensive

process by which the excess of cognition and discursive automatisms obscure the original feeling. This

new perspective sees psychic defenses not as barriers to be overcome to reveal a hidden unconscious,

but as adaptation strategies that, although protective, can also hide a primordial affective dimension,

essential for the constitution of the self. In this sense, Merleau-Ponty’s (2018) phenomenology of

perception resonates, for whom primordial sensory experience sustains existence and subjectivity

before symbolism.

In addition, Psychic Veiling dialogues with contemporary criticisms of the cognitive

hypervigilance of the modern subject, such as those formulated by Han (2018), who denounces the

exhaustion and blindness of the soul in the face of informational saturation and the automation of

thinking. Damásio (2012) reinforces that affects are necessary foundations for cognitive processing and

the construction of the self, and their concealment by a rational excess compromises the authenticity

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of the experience.

Clinically, this reconceptualization implies shifting the focus from the interpretation of

repressed contents to the valorization of the affective processes that emerge in the subject’s vital ow.

Thus, the invitation proposed here is addressed to all those who dedicate themselves to knowledge,

whether of theory or of themselves. It is no longer a matter of digging a buried archive, but of following

the uid movement of subjective experiences, promoting an organic integration between the cognitive

and the affective. This perspective is close to the approaches centered on the felt experience (Gendlin,

1997) and the phenomenological listening of existence (Heidegger, 2015), in which authenticity resides

in the direct and less fragmented experience of the being.

It should be noted that Cogitocentric Psychology does not have the purpose of disregarding,

neglecting or minimizing the relevance of Freud, Lacan or psychoanalysis in general, as a theoretical

and clinical matrix. Rather, it is a matter of recognizing these foundations as fertile soil from which

it becomes possible to perceive what has not yet been fully named, an experiential dimension that

overows the limits of what is already symbolized, summoning a listening to what insists on remaining

veiled.

Therefore, by sustaining the position that “the unconscious does not exist” as a structured

instance, this work invites a deep reection on the nature of subjective experience, stimulating the

revision of established theoretical models and traditional therapeutic practices. Thus, a new eld of

dialogue opens up, where the symbolic and the affective are presented in their most integrated, vital

and pulsating form.

Cogitocentrism: Ontological Critique of Thought as Prison

This approach was born as a response to the hegemony of thought in the Western philosophical

and clinical tradition. From the moment René Descartes proclaimed his famous “cogito ergo sum”, in

Portuguese, “I think, therefore I am”, thought became the absolute criterion of existence. However,

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this supremacy of thought established a structural prison: the subject imprisoned himself in his

own thought, detaching himself from the body, from the affection and silence that give him life and

authenticity (Heidegger, 2015).

Therefore, Cogitocentrism is not just an excess of thought: it is a form of existence that has

forgotten its pre-verbal and embodied origin, a deformed ontology, a “way of being” intoxicated by

discursive reason. It isthus congured as a cultural and subjective pathology, where thought ceases to

be a mere means to become a structural vice. It is a compulsive and exhaustive ow of rationality that,

paradoxically, obscures feeling and prevents genuine contact with the Real. Han (2024) denounces

a society of positivity where excessive transparency and production cancel out silence and interval.

Cogitocentrism is therefore also a political phenomenon.

From this perspective, we propose a critical rereading of the Cartesian maxim, updating

it in the light of contemporary psychic suffering: I think, therefore I am, but I am infected with the

addiction to thinking, and I suffer for it. This reformulation brings to light that psychic pain does not

come only from the repression of unconscious contents, but also from the wear and tear caused by

cognitive hypertrophy and the discursive colonization of experience.

To understand the clinical and ontological impact of Cogitocentrism, we propose three

foundational axes that support the overcoming of this epistemic vice:

1. Face-to-face. Before being thought, existence is lived. Before language, there is the body.

Before signication, presence is manifested. Subjective life erupts from a sensory-drive matrix where

the being reveals itself as rhythm, heat and breath. Feeling is the inaugural form of consciousness,

a primordial dance that precedes meaning and of which the word is only the late echo. This idea

resonates with Merleau-Ponty (2018), for whom the body is the original place of experience and

subjectivity, and with Heidegger (2015), who emphasizes being-in-the-world as a fundamental mode

of existence.

2. The Knowing Silence. Knowledge is not limited to what can be articulated in discourse.

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Knowledge also dwells in gestures, pauses, looks, what we call implicit discourse. There is a silent

wisdom in the body that escapes the sieve of logic and grammar. To listen to silence is to recognize

that the truth of the subject often resides in the interval between signs, in the ssures of articulated

discourse. This conception evokes the phenomenology of the lived and the notion of productive “non-

knowing” of Gadamer (2015) and Bachelard (2007), as well as clinical listening centered on sensitive

experience.

3. The Incarnate Clinic. It proposes a therapeutic practice that privileges presence as a clinical

instrument. Instead of interpreting the discourse based on pre-established schemes, the therapist restores

the subject’s ability to feel authentically. The clinic then becomes a space for affective reintegration,

where the body can become a home again, and silence, a powerful and expressive language. This

stance is echoed in the approach to body psychotherapy and in the existential phenomenological

therapy of Gendlin (1997) and Yalom (2005).

Against this backdrop, the proposal of Cogitocentric Psychology is developed, a new

psychological approach that welcomes untranslated affect, listens to silence as a symbolic eld and

recognizes suffering as an effect of the imbalance between cognition and presence. This psychology

invites a return to the body and to feeling, identifying the addiction to thought and opening up to a

freer, more pulsating way of existing, less imprisoned by the gears of the intellect.

However, it is important to emphasize that thought, in itself, is not the enemy, it is a valuable

tool, a sophisticated expression of human experience. The problem emerges when thinking becomes

a monopoly of existence, eclipsing feeling, intuiting and simply being. It is not a matter of banishing

thought, but of restoring it to its rightful place in the concert of psychic and organismic functions, those

that integrate body, affect, perception and cognition in a vital harmony. Cogitocentric Psychology,

therefore, does not propose the villainization of thought, but its conscious reintegration into the ow

of living. It is necessary to establish a lucid management of these functions, an autonomy capable

of alternating, with freedom, between sensitive silence, embodied presence and reective thinking.

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For only in this way can the subject experience the power of not thinking not as absence, but as full

presence, and, later, think about what emerged when he did not think. This is the longed-for freedom:

not the prison of thought, but the walk between ways of being.

The Egoic Matrix and the Emergence of Psychemes: A New Cartography of Psychic Life

Cogitocentric Psychology presents itself as a radical reconguration of clinical and symbolic

thinking, a rupture that challenges traditional pillars and summons a new era of interpretation of

psychic life. At the heart of this approach is a vehement rejection of the metaphor of the unconscious

as a dark and impoverished basement, replacing it with a vision that sees the necessary Psychic Veiling

as a living and continuously emerging dynamic. Far from representing a simple reservoir of repressed

desires, this eld reveals itself as a pulsating space where affects are transmuted into symbols in ux,

driven by words, automatisms and narratives hastily woven to safeguard a primordial feeling. Psychic

Veiling, therefore, does not uncritically hide the founding truths, but actively participates in the

symbolic operation that conceals and, simultaneously, protects the essence of affective experiences.

More than delimiting rigid psychic structures or abstract topics, it is proposed here to evoke

an Egoic Matrix, a symbolic topology in permanent mutation, in which the self does not present

itself as a cohesive and immutable entity, but as a multifaceted constellation of partial presences,

affective expressions and narrative modes constantly reorganized. In this scenario, two essential and

interconnected dimensions of subjectivity are unraveled: on the one hand, the Implicit Ego, whose

sensory-drive matrix precedes and even transcends language, constituting a raw and untamed vitality,

it is the one that tries to protect the individual through the Implicit discourse; on the other, the Explicit

Ego, the symbolic architect who is in charge of structuring the narrated identity and giving order to

this inconstant tapestry, this psyche that gives face-to-face to the world, which he faces directly. Such

duality not only illustrates the intrinsic complexity of being, but also proposes a new cartography of

psychic experience, where the tension and intertwining between the affective and the symbolic reveal

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the contours of an existence in constant recreation.

The Psychemas

Psychemes are living formations of symbolizing-feeling. More than mere mental

representations or unconscious contents, Psychemes are elementary symbolic entities that operate as

dynamic units of psychic expression. They do not refer to Platonic ideas or mnemic traces, but emerge

as mobile syntheses between the sensible gesture and the symbolic possibility. They are singular

modes of subjectivation, vibrating at the interface between affect and language, body and sign.

The primordial Psychema is born from Sensory Plenitude, the state of pre-verbal, intrauterine

communion, where body and world are not yet distinguished. In this original space, each stimulus,

such as the heat of the amniotic uid or the sound of the mother’s heartbeat, composes an experience

full of affection, a continuous symphony that anchors the formation of the primordial Ego. In this

context, the Ego is not yet Implicit, much less Explicit: it is just a pulsating presence, without language,

without narrative, just feeling. This initial Ego is later named Implicit Ego after birth, when the break

with the Uterine Paradise occurs.

The Implicit Ego, from that moment on, becomes a central Psychema, whose mission is

eternal: To protect the subject from the threats of fragmentation, of death. The implicit Ego is afraid of

feeling the original anguish, it is afraid of what it does not understand, due to the experience of being

born. It acts as a guardian of primordial affection, functioning as a shield against the violence of the

Real. By its side, the Explicit Ego, a structuring psyche that emerged later, narratively organizes the

experiences, transforming the impulses of the Implicit into discursive forms.

Both reside in the Egoic Matrix, a symbolic eld in constant metamorphosis. This matrix

also houses another essential psyche: the Psychic Veil. Far from being just a symbolic lter, it is

a semi-sentient, living membrane that regulates the transit between primary affects and conscious

symbolization. When exible, the Veil allows the Psychema to cross the boundary between the

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Implicit and the Explicit, maintaining its affective potency by gaining symbolic contour. When

hardened, Psychic Veiling is installed: a closure of the membrane that prevents the emergence of

feeling, encapsulating the Psychemes and transforming them into symptoms or inert repetitions.

Therefore, Psychemas are not only expressive units: they are rhythms, they are symbolic

organs, they are living instances that operate between the esh and the sign. To understand its genesis

is to understand that before the word there was gesture, before symbol there was heat, and before

language there was the impulse to exist, an impulse that pulsates to this day under the surface of

speech, waiting to be heard.

Theoretical Differentiation

The concept of Psychema diverges from other classical theoretical constructions by proposing

a dynamic unity that arises from the tension between brute feeling and symbolization. Unlike the

Jungian complex, the Psychema is not structured around collective archetypes or primordial images

(Jung, 2016); it is not anchored in the collective unconscious, but in the lived affection, in the singular

instant of the sensible experience. While complexes are organized by an archetypal symbolic logic,

Psychemes operate as immanent ows of feeling.

Unlike the Lacanian signier, the Psychema does not depend on the signifying chain to

constitute itself (Lacan, 1985). It is not the effect of language, but its sensible precondition. The

Psyche is born in the body and only later allows itself to be translated, partially and imperfectly, into

language. It is not what is missing, but what pulsates.

Still distinct from the Freudian mnemic trait, the Psychema is not a passive vestige waiting for

updating (Freud, 2019). It is movement, expressive power that can both be updated and retracted. While

the mnemic trace refers to a past to be rediscovered, the Psychema is a living form of subjectivation

that pulsates in the present and points to the subject’s symbolic future.

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Philosophical Relations

The notion of Psychema, as a dynamic unit of symbolizing feeling, nds resonance with

several philosophical and epistemological traditions, although it presents its own originality within

the proposal of Cogitocentric Psychology. In dialogue with Ernst Cassirer (2001), it can be said that the

Psychema preserves the intuition that the subject organizes his experience through symbolic systems.

However, it goes further: while in Cassirer the symbol is a cultural and rational form of mediation of

reality, the Psychema is a sensitive vibration that precedes any cultural structure. It is the protoform

of the symbol, the gesture that seeks the word, the affection that has not yet become a concept.

The proximity to Deleuze and Guattari (2011) is established from the logic of agency and

the deconstruction of xed identities. Psychemes, as desiring machines, operate in mutable networks,

connecting affects, signs, memories, and intensities in singular constellations. They are devices of

subjectivation that do not obey the logic of the one and cohesive subject, but the logic of multiplicity.

Each Psychema agencies lines of ight, re-inscribing subjectivity in affective and semiotic maps in

permanent recomposition.

Within schizoanalysis, the theory of Psychemas also nds afnity: it does not represent an

external reality, but constitutes it in its own operation. It is not a reex, but a power. Subjectivity,

in this context, ceases to be a given and becomes an event. The Psyche is a living expression of the

subject’s becoming, an emergence of the psychic real that resists full codication.

Simondon’s (2020) ontology also offers a key to productive reading. For the author, being is

not given as substance, but as an ongoing process of individuation. The Psyche shares this nature: it

is not a ready-made entity, but a relational intertwining between affects, senses, and language. Just

as individuation is constituted in relationships, and not before them, the Psyche only exists in the

crossing between the sensible and the symbolic, between the implicit and the explicit.

Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology (2018) also provides a crucial foundation. By emphasizing

that the body is the primary place of signication, Merleau-Ponty allows us to understand the Psyche

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as an embodied expression, a language that precedes discourse, a grammar of gesture and presence.

Beyond rational semiotics, the Psychema is a writing of the esh, a symbol that is born in the body

and maintains the texture of the experienced. The word, in this horizon, is no more than the last fold

of an experience that began in sensible silence.

In this way, the concept of Psychema constitutes a point of convergence and overcoming

of multiple philosophical traditions. It is, at the same time, an original symbolic form, a desiring

machine, an operator of individuation and an embodied expression. A living topology of feeling,

where subjectivity is not essence, but a crossing.

Conclusion

The proposal of Cogitocentric Psychology, exposed throughout this article, challenges

traditional paradigms by breaking with the static and hidden notion of the unconscious, inaugurating

a vision in which the vital pulse of feeling manifests itself in a continuous and inescapable way. This

reconception proposes that the psyche is not restricted to repressed contents or archaic structures

of the unconscious, but emerges as a dynamic eld, the Psychic Veiling, where the tension between

affectivity and symbolization is revealed as the essence of existence.

By criticizing the hegemonism of thought, Cogitocentrism is pointed out as a prison that

diverts the subject from his own experience. The insistent sovereignty of cognition in the Western

tradition leads to an alienation of bodily and affective experience, obscuring the authenticity of the

encounter with the Real. In this way, the proposal presented not only problematizes the excessive

cult of thought, but also calls for a resignication of being, where presence, silence and the body gain

centrality in the constitution of subjectivity.

At the heart of this approach, the concepts of Egoic Matrix and Psychemas offer a new

cartography of psychic life. By recognizing the Ego as a multifaceted constellation, divided between

an implicit, visceral, pre-linguistic dimension and an explicit, structuring, narrative dimension, the

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theory goes beyond the limitations of traditional denitions. Psychemes, as living formations of

symbolizing feeling, emerge not as vestiges of a repressed past, but as pulsating rhythms that integrate

the body and the sign, anticipating and at the same time recreating the subject’s internal world.

From the clinical point of view, this new perspective inaugurates therapeutic practices that

value the patient’s lived experience, rescuing the importance of the body, silence and affection in the

construction of the self. The analyst stops interpreting xed and hidden contents, starting to follow the

dynamic ow of experiences with sensitivity, thus promoting a reconnection that transcends the limits

of rational interpretation. This approach also invites a fruitful intersection between different elds of

knowledge, from Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology to Han’s contemporary critiques, expanding the

possibilities of intervention and understanding of the human psyche.

Finally, the proposal outlined here is not presented as an end point, but as the beginning

of an open and interdisciplinary dialogue. By emphasizing that the essence of subjectivity lies in

the integration between feeling and symbolism, the article promotes a review of traditional models

and points to innovative paths of investigation. We therefore invite the scientic community and

psychology professionals to explore these new dimensions of being, where vitality, corporality and

affectivity form the fertile soil for a more authentic existence, less imprisoned by the gears of excessive

rationality.

In a world increasingly marked by cognitive hyperactivity and information overload, this

proposal proves to be urgent and transformative. It provides subsidies for us to rethink therapeutic

practices and the epistemological foundations of psychology, promoting a deep reconnection with the

roots of existence and making room for a new era of psychic health, where emotion and presence meet

in the construction of the self.

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