Benjamin Brett and Geometrical Psychology

A Benjamin Brett drawing of the shape of consciousness

Back in 1887 Benjamin Brett published his thoughts on geometrical psychology. This early text on psychological thought forms is still available and you can get access to a copy of it here. 

Benjamin Brett's geometrical analysis of the shape of consciousness 

I have been looking back on a few of these 'oddball' publications, such as 'Thought Forms by Annie Besant and C. W. Leadbeater or Walter Russell's diagrams of mystical energy forces, and rethinking what they might be about. At the time they were often associated with Theosophy and Madame Blavatsky's attempts to uncover the underlying spiritual and metaphysical aspects of reality, but I have been exploring a different idea about thought forms, one that I think still has relevance. 

I have also been exploring ways to visualise 'interoception', those thoughts and feelings we have that emerge from inside our bodies rather than from exterior perception. But in order to do this I have had to rethink how I contextualise the body. 

 From a series of images exploring how inner body feelings can be visualised

The exterior of the body is a surface contiguous with its interior. If we think about the body as a topological entity, one with a continuous surface that is in effect 'folded' as Deleuze would put it, we can imagine it both interacting with exterior perceptions, and producing its own interior perceptions at the same time, both types of perceptual experiences influencing our intuitive awareness of the shape of thought forms. Deleuze in reference to what he calls 'le pli' (the fold) argued that the world can be interpreted as a body; a body that is made of continuous folds and twisting surfaces that weave in and out of spacetime. The idea of 'le pli' for Deleuze, referring both to a twist of fabric and to the origins of life, rather like a twisted strand of DNA. The contiguous nature of the body's topology means that in effect there is no 'real' interiority to the body, only a sliding into and out of darkness, such as that experienced as you go down a long tunnel, or make a descent into a cave during the full light of day. Because no light penetrates into our interior we tend to think of it as a separate space, but it is not, it is though much more viscous, wet and sticky, in the same way that a swamp has no hard boundary with a dry flood plain, they can both be encountered on the same journey. In this case what I'm imagining is a journey of exploration into the role of perception as a constructional force that shapes our consciousness. 

The initial diagrams also explore an idea of a surrounding membrane though which passes information that eventually passes into the body, be this sound, food, a story told to me, a touch or a smell. The shape of the inner feeling form being a hybrid of both visual memory and synesthetic play. 

Diagrams of introception

The more diagrammatic representations came first, and the textured and coloured images afterwards, and in between arrived the workshop images whereby people responded to my initial visual thoughts with their own.

Bunion pain

Dizzyness 

The more textural responses from others, (in this case Lynette W.), led me to think more about the fact that it is textural detail that gives emotive power to images. (See my earlier posts on texture)

Gradually the various things I'm thinking about begin to make some sort of sense if only to myself.

See also: 

Perceptual research

Drawing textures

Surface and inner body perception

Qualia

Hybridity and permeability

The dotted or dashed line

Eye music