Within the depth-psychology and somatic-psychology corpus, ‘Map’ operates on two distinct registers that occasionally intersect. The first is the neurobiological-cartographic: Brodmann’s cytoarchitectonic maps of the cerebral cortex (Damasio), hippocampal spatial maps and place-cell research (Kandel), and the molecular substrates of spatial memory storage. Here the map is a representation of neural topography — a scientific instrument for locating function in tissue. The second, and far more therapeutically active, register belongs to the Polyvagal tradition as elaborated by Dana and Porges, where ‘map’ becomes a clinical practice. The autonomic map — in its Personal Profile, Triggers and Glimmers, and Art Map variants — externalises the three-state hierarchy of the nervous system, making invisible neurobiological process visible and narratable. This therapeutic mapping draws explicitly on both hemispheres: right-brain embodied sensing paired with left-brain language. Murray Stein supplies a third, Jungian valence through the phrase ‘Jung’s Map of the Soul,’ invoking cartography as metaphor for the whole psyche. The productive tension across these registers concerns epistemology: is a map a discovery of pre-existing structure (neural topology, Jungian archetypes) or a co-construction between therapist and client that itself reorganises experience? Dana’s insistence that maps are ‘dynamic, shifting’ favours the latter, while Kandel’s molecular biology favours the former.
The goal of autonomic mapping is for clients to illustrate their experience of the world from the three states of activation— safety, danger, and life-threat—by detailing body responses, beliefs, emotions, and behaviors.
Autonomic mapping is presented as the central therapeutic method of Polyvagal-informed practice, transforming neurobiological states into personally narrated, visually accessible profiles.
, The Polyvagal Theory in Therapy: Engaging the Rhythm of Regulation, 2018thesis
Clients tell me that they hang their maps on the refrigerator or carry them in their wallets or pockets. With practice, clients begin to picture their maps in their minds and use these mental maps to routinely place themselves on their autonomic hierarchy.
Dana demonstrates that the map migrates from external artifact to internalized mental model, becoming a portable orienting device within the client’s daily regulatory practice.
, The Polyvagal Theory in Therapy: Engaging the Rhythm of Regulation, 2018thesis
These are dynamic maps, shifting as m[ovement occurs]. The mapping process gives clients a way to use Polyvagal Theory to understand actions—their own and those of others.
Maps are framed as living documents rather than static representations, constituting an ongoing epistemological lens through which clients interpret the autonomic states of self and others.
, The Polyvagal Theory in Therapy: Engaging the Rhythm of Regulation, 2018thesis
With an autonomic map, home is the safety of the ventral vagal state at the top of the autonomic hierarchy.
Porges situates the map within a spatial-navigational metaphor where ventral vagal safety constitutes a ‘home’ to which the map always points, aligning cartographic orientation with regulatory homecoming.
, The Polyvagal Theory: Neurophysiological Foundations of Emotions, Attachment, Communication, and Self-Regulation, 2011thesis
Art Maps can illustrate one autonomic state or the three states of the autonomic hierarchy. Creating one state fosters an intimate connection to that autonomic experience, while illustrating the hierarchy brings awareness to the relationship between states.
Art Maps extend the cartographic method into creative and somatic territory, allowing non-verbal, right-hemisphere representation of autonomic experience.
, The Polyvagal Theory in Therapy: Engaging the Rhythm of Regulation, 2018supporting
Creating an Art Map is a personal process, each map having its own shape, style, and story. The process and product are both important parts of making an Art Map.
The idiosyncratic, narrative quality of Art Maps underscores that mapping is a co-creative therapeutic act, not a standardised diagnostic instrument.
, The Polyvagal Theory: Neurophysiological Foundations of Emotions, Attachment, Communication, and Self-Regulation, 2011supporting
Describing the specific factors that create entry into a state is necessary in order to understand how to predict, manage, or re-create state shifts.
Trigger-and-glimmer mapping functions diagnostically and prognostically, enabling clients and therapists to anticipate and intentionally engineer autonomic transitions.
, The Polyvagal Theory in Therapy: Engaging the Rhythm of Regulation, 2018supporting
Nearing the end of a session, the question ‘Where are you on your map?’ is a reliable gauge for exploring what would be helpful for your client as they transition back into the world beyond the safety of the therapy session.
The map becomes a real-time clinical query device, orienting the therapeutic encounter around the client’s current position within the autonomic hierarchy.
, The Polyvagal Theory in Therapy: Engaging the Rhythm of Regulation, 2018supporting
The Triggers and Glimmers Map… Glimmers can help calm a nervous system in survival mode and bring a return of autonomic regulation.
The Triggers and Glimmers Map functions as a bidirectional chart of dysregulating and regulating cues, giving visual structure to the dynamic interplay of threat and safety signals.
, The Polyvagal Theory in Therapy: Engaging the Rhythm of Regulation, 2018supporting
There is a remarkable continuity in his basic intellectual orientation.
Stein’s title itself positions Jung’s theoretical architecture as a cartographic project — a systematic rendering of the soul’s territory — affirming ‘map’ as an organising metaphor for analytical psychology as a whole.
, Jung’s Map of the Soul: An Introduction, 1998thesis
I now wanted to know whether the same molecular pathways needed to induce long-term potentiation and spatial memory in our experiments on the hippocampus also form and maintain the spatial map.
Kandel frames the hippocampal spatial map as a biologically instantiated structure whose formation and maintenance depend on identifiable molecular mechanisms, grounding psychological mapping in cellular neuroscience.
, In search of memory the emergence of a new science of mind, 2006supporting
O’Keefe applied this Kantian logic about space to explicit memory. He argued that many forms of explicit memory use spatial coordinates—that is, we typically remember people and events in a spatial context.
Spatial memory is theorised as the organisational scaffold of explicit memory, linking the neuroscientific map-concept to a Kantian philosophical inheritance about the a priori structuring of experience.
, In search of memory the emergence of a new science of mind, 2006supporting
It is known as Brodmann’s map and its areas are designated by number… This is neither a phrenology map nor a contemporary map of brain functions. It is simply a convenient anatomical reference.
Damasio uses Brodmann’s cortical map as an exemplar of structural neuroanatomical cartography while carefully distinguishing scientific mapping from reductive localisationism.
, Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain, 1994supporting
space mapping in, 94–99. see also mapping in space
An index entry cross-references spatial mapping as a discrete clinical exercise within the Polyvagal therapeutic framework, indicating its formal status as a named technique.
, The Polyvagal Theory in Therapy: Engaging the Rhythm of Regulation, 2018aside
Unlike a maze, a labyrinth has one path and no dead ends. Often thought of as a path to transformation, when you enter a labyrinth, there is a release of connection to the everyday wor[ld].
The labyrinth is contrasted with the maze as a navigational metaphor for therapeutic movement — a single-path structure resonant with the directed, non-branching orientation that autonomic maps provide.
, Polyvagal Exercises for Safety and Connection A Guide for, 2018aside