Smell occupies a surprisingly rich and contested position across the depth-psychology corpus. Ranging from Aristotle’s frank admission that the human olfactory sense is the least refined of the special senses — unable to discriminate odours beyond the pleasant and the painful — to Hillman’s insistence that smell is the premier analogue for image-sensing precisely because it unites the concrete with the immaterial, the term traverses ontology, neuroscience, clinical phenomenology, and symbolic hermeneutics. Hillman elevates smell to the status of ‘undersense,’ the hyponoia capable of perceiving psychic realities where daylight cognition fails; when we smell something, he argues, we take in its spirit. Burnett and allied neuroscientists ground this intuition in evolutionary biology: the olfactory system and the hippocampus co-evolved, binding smell to memory and emotion at the deepest phylogenetic strata — fear, it is argued, may be the first emotion, and smell its earliest trigger. Ferenczi extends the clinical reach further, suggesting that persecutory patients, like dogs, can smell hidden or repressed emotions in others. Abraham locates smell-fetishism within the architecture of osphresiolagnia and perversion. Moore, drawing on Ficino, treats aroma as a soul-faculty — a trace presence, an emblem of memory’s ghostly persistence. Plato frames olfactory objects as half-formed, intermediate between elements. Taken together, these voices reveal smell as the liminal sense: archaic, affective, philosophically underdetermined, and symbolically charged.
Smell is the undersense, the hyponoia (p. 137 above) that perceives psychic realities when ‘all things become smoke’… When we smell something, we are taking in its spirit.
Hillman argues that smell is the archetypal depth-sense, the faculty that apprehends psychic and underworld realities inaccessible to ordinary perception.
, The Dream and the Underworld, 1979thesis
The sense of smell alone may be a better analogy for image-sensing than both seeing and hearing together, because smell is both more concrete, and less.
Hillman proposes smell as the privileged epistemological model for depth-psychological image-sensing because it dissolves the concrete-abstract boundary that traps vision and hearing.
, A Blue Fire: The Essential James Hillman, 1989thesis
If smell was the first sense, then many believe fear to be the first emotion… memories triggered by smell invariably include a greater amount of emotional content than other types of episodic memories.
Burnett establishes a neuro-evolutionary argument that smell and emotion are primordially bonded through the shared architecture of the olfactory system and the amygdala.
, The emotional brain lost and found in the science of, 2023thesis
those suffering from persecution mania — like certain animals, especially dogs — can smell people’s hidden or repressed emotions and tendencies.
Ferenczi extends the clinical concept of smell into an intersubjective capacity, positing that hypersensitive patients may olfactorily perceive the unconscious affective states of others.
, The Clinical Diary of Sándor Ferenczi, 1932thesis
evidence suggests the olfactory system and the hippocampus evolved together; they influenced each other’s development because they’re fundamentally linked.
Burnett presents evolutionary neuroscience evidence for the structural co-development of smell and memory in the brain.
, The emotional brain lost and found in the science of, 2023supporting
pathological enhancements of smell have indeed been reported as occurring in paraphilia, fetishism, and allied perversions and regressions… the universality of inhibition, even at the most elemental perceptual level.
Sacks documents clinical hyperosmia and situates it within a broader theory of neurological inhibition, noting that the liberation of smell in paraphilic states reveals a more primitive, ‘protopathic’ perceptual stratum.
, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, 1985supporting
In this so-called smell-fetishism pleasure is very frequently obtained from the odour of perspiring and unclean feet; and these attract the patient’s scoptophilic instincts at the same time.
Abraham analyses smell-fetishism (osphresiolagnia) as a clinical formation in which olfactory pleasure becomes the vehicle for repressed and displaced sexual instinct.
, Selected Papers on Psychoanalysis, 1927supporting
Aromas and fragrances, as Cirlot reminds us, are both stimulants and symbols for memory, a faculty of the soul we keep running into… odors have an uncanny power to bring up memories of events long forgotten.
Moore, drawing on Ficino, frames smell as a soul-faculty that mediates between the absent object and memory, functioning as a psychic trace rather than mere sensation.
, The Planets Within: The Astrological Psychology of Marsilio Ficino, 1990supporting
These needs are more like fragrances, not as obvious and substantial as literal behavior… Like the fragrance of flowers or of incense, an aroma reminds us of the recent presence of an object.
Moore employs olfactory imagery as an analogy for the subtle, non-literal needs of the soul, linking fragrance to memory as a Ficinian soul-faculty.
, The Planets Within: The Astrological Psychology of Marsilio Ficino, 1982supporting
he noticed the smell of geese, and instantly he realized that it was this smell that had touched off the flow of memories… the characteristic smell had left a lasting though forgotten impression.
Jung illustrates how a subliminal olfactory perception can serve as the unconscious trigger for a sudden eruption of repressed or forgotten memory-content.
, Man and His Symbols, 1964supporting
it’ll probably be a while longer again before I can smell Dad’s signature aftershave without being emotionally overwhelmed by it.
Burnett offers a personal phenomenological instance of smell’s power to reactivate grief and emotionally charged autobiographical memory.
, The emotional brain lost and found in the science of, 2023supporting
it is not clear what sort of thing smell is as it is clear with sound and colour… man smells badly and perceives none of the smell-objects except the painful and pleasant ones, as his organ is not accurate.
Aristotle identifies smell as the least philosophically determinate of the senses and the one in which human perception is most deficient compared to other animals.
, De Anima (On the Soul), -350supporting
The faculty of smell does not admit of differences of kind; for all smells are of a half-formed nature, and no element is so proportioned as to have any smell.
Plato’s Timaeus assigns smell an ontologically intermediate and ill-defined status — half-formed between elements — which anticipates later depth-psychological treatments of smell as a liminal, transitional phenomenon.
, Timaeus, -360supporting
Smells come from what is dry as flavours from what is moist. Consequently the organ of smell is potentially dry.
Aristotle situates the organ of smell within his elemental theory of sensation, linking olfactory perception to dryness and the potential state of the receptive organ.
, On the Soul (De Anima), -350supporting
The third sense is smell, which is caused by the nostrils transmitting the vapours to the brain… It is the faculty by which vapours are perceived and apprehended.
John of Damascus systematises smell within a hierarchical taxonomy of the senses, defining it as vapour-perception transmitted to the anterior cerebral ventricle.
, Saint John of Damascus Collection, 2016supporting
some unconditioned attribute of cat smell can innately arouse a fear system in the rat brain, and this emotional state becomes rapidly associated with the contextual cues of the chamber.
Panksepp demonstrates experimentally that olfactory stimuli can innately and persistently activate archaic fear circuits, supporting the evolutionary primacy of smell-emotion linkage.
, Affective Neuroscience The Foundations of Human and Animal, 1998supporting
practice focusing attention on tastes and smells, especially at mealtime, but also in nature or in the city… focus all your attention on your taste and smell.
Ogden incorporates attention to smell as a grounding sensory resource within sensorimotor psychotherapy interventions for trauma and affect regulation.
, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Interventions for Trauma and, 2015aside
if the smell-object is a smell and if it has an effect, then the effect that smell will have will be smelling — thus it is impossible that any of the things that cannot smell be affected in any way by a smell.
Aristotle addresses the ontological status of smell as an affecting quality, arguing that olfactory qualities only actualise their effects in a receptive percipient.
, De Anima (On the Soul), -350aside
In the case of the faculty residing in the nostrils no definite types are to be discerned… smells always proceed from bodies that are damp, or putrefying, or liquefying, or evaporating.
Cornford’s commentary on the Timaeus elaborates Plato’s view that olfactory objects resist taxonomic definition because they are transitional states of matter rather than stable elemental forms.
, Plato’s cosmology the Timaeus of Plato, 1997aside