Ultrametric spaces in cognitive and psychoanalytic theory: a shared focus on cognition and emotion

The spatial metaphor of the mind has been largely adopted both in folk and in Academic psychology. In the last two decades some attempts have been proposed to describe mental representations in formal theories. Here I will first consider the development of a topologic approach that models semantic and episodic memory functions. This approach has been recently expanded to include very relevant aspects of the unconscious mind. In this last attempt, a complete reformulation of the classical psychoanalytic distinction between Conscious and Unconscious mental activity has been derived. The new formalizations provides more insight on the role of emotions in thinking and is therefore potentially relevant for the development of an integrated view of mental activity.