Systema psyches: A temporal taxonomy of mental phenomena

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 such as depression and autism. • Introduces Systema Psyches, a temporal taxonomy for psychological phenomena. • meta-frameworks. • Maps cognitive, emotional and personality domains across logarithmic timescales. • Explains ASD and depression as opposite distortions in temporal hierarchies. • Integrates psychological theory by linking mental structure to temporal dynamics.