The term ‘Internal Map’ appears across the depth-psychology corpus as a structuring metaphor for the mind’s representational models of self, world, and relationship — models that guide perception, behavior, and emotional regulation below the level of conscious deliberation. The most theoretically developed usage derives from Bowlby’s concept of ‘internal working models,’ which he drew directly from cognitive psychology (Craik, Beck) to argue that higher animals require a brain-based map of both environment and organism-in-environment if they are to predict, control, and navigate their world. This cartographic metaphor converges from multiple directions: Damasio grounds it neurobiologically in the nervous system’s capacity to draw literal maps of objects and events in space through neural circuit activity; Kandel connects it to hippocampal place cells and the molecular architecture of spatial memory; O’Connor extends it to grief, arguing that the brain maintains predictive maps of social reality that are violated by bereavement; and Dana, working from polyvagal theory, operationalizes it therapeutically through ‘autonomic mapping’ — the explicit charting of a client’s nervous-system states. Across these positions, a shared tension persists: whether the internal map is primarily cognitive-representational (Bowlby, Kandel), neurophysiological-somatic (Damasio, Porges), or therapeutically reconstructible (Dana). The stakes are clinical as much as theoretical — a distorted map produces distorted attachment, dysregulation, and grief.