INTRODUCTION
Introduction
How to Use
CORE PRINCIPLES
INHERITANCE
SOMATIC
AFFECTIVE
SYMBOLIC
COGNITIVE
HIGHER ORDER
AWAKENED
Diversity
Applications
THERAPY
INTRODUCTION
Introduction
How to Use
CORE PRINCIPLES
INHERITANCE
SOMATIC
AFFECTIVE
SYMBOLIC
COGNITIVE
HIGHER ORDER
AWAKENED
Diversity
Applications
THERAPY
INTRODUCTION
DEVELOPMENTAL
ADAPTIVE
CORE PRINCIPLES
INHERITANCE
SOMATIC
AFFECTIVE
WE ARE:
SYMBOLIC
COGNITIVE
HIGHER ORDER
AWAKENED
FRACTALS
ECOLOGICAL
THERAPY
INTRODUCTION
Evolution
Clinical Application
Transmission
CORE PRINCIPLES
Place
INHERITANCE
SOMATIC
AFFECTIVE
SYMBOLIC
COGNITIVE
HIGHER ORDER
AWAKENED
Development
Neurobiology
THERAPY
INTRODUCTION
Evolution
Clinical Application
Safety
CORE PRINCIPLES
Attachment
INHERITANCE
Physiology
Interoception
SOMATIC
Therapies
AFFECTIVE
SYMBOLIC
COGNITIVE
HIGHER ORDER
AWAKENED
Development
Neurobiology
THERAPY
INTRODUCTION
Evolution
Clinical Application
Affect
CORE PRINCIPLES
Motivation
INHERITANCE
Therapies
SOMATIC
AFFECTIVE
SYMBOLIC
COGNITIVE
HIGHER ORDER
AWAKENED
Neurobiology
Development
THERAPY
INTRODUCTION
Evolution
Clinical Application
Organisation
CORE PRINCIPLES
Internalisation
INHERITANCE
Externalisation
Therapies
SOMATIC
AFFECTIVE
SYMBOLIC
COGNITIVE
HIGHER ORDER
AWAKENED
Development
Neurobiology
THERAPY
INTRODUCTION
Evolution
Clinical Application
Cognition
CORE PRINCIPLES
Cognition
INHERITANCE
SOMATIC
AFFECTIVE
SYMBOLIC
COGNITIVE
HIGHER ORDER
AWAKENED
Development
Neurobiology
THERAPY
INTRODUCTION
Evolution
Clinical Application
Metacognition
CORE PRINCIPLES
Regulation
INHERITANCE
Regulation
SOMATIC
AFFECTIVE
SYMBOLIC
COGNITIVE
HIGHER ORDER
AWAKENED
Development
Neurobiology
THERAPY
INTRODUCTION
Evolution
Clinical Application
Pre vs Post
CORE PRINCIPLES
Pre vs Post
INHERITANCE
SOMATIC
AFFECTIVE
SYMBOLIC
COGNITIVE
HIGHER ORDER
AWAKENED
Development
Neurobiology
THERAPY
INTRODUCTION
Registers|Tiers|Flows
Your Mind
CORE PRINCIPLES
INHERITANCE
SOMATIC
AFFECTIVE
SYMBOLIC
COGNITIVE
HIGHER ORDER
AWAKENED
Integration
Formulation
THERAPY
We are Developmental
Our Evolutionary Story
Text button
Our Evolutionary Story
Individual Development
Our Evolutionary Story
Text button
Our Evolutionary Story
Therepeutic Modalities
Our Evolutionary Story
Text button
Our Evolutionary Story
Clinical Application
Our Evolutionary Story
Text button
Our Evolutionary Story
Our Evolutionary Story
Our Evolutionary Story
Text button
Our Evolutionary Story
Neurobiological Correlates
Our Evolutionary Story
Text button
Our Evolutionary Story
Important Notice
Introduction
Every clinician faces the same fundamental challenge: making sense of the person sitting across from them. What shaped this individual? Why are they suffering? And what kind of treatment will help? The proliferation of over five hundred therapeutic approaches over recent decades [1] has been both a strength and a liability. Clinicians now have access to a rich toolkit: somatic approaches, attachment-based therapies, cognitive and behavioural interventions, emotion-focused work, psychodynamic formulation, trauma-informed care, and more. Yet, without a coherent organising framework about the very thing we treat, the human mind, many clinicians navigate between their clients' complex presentations and a variety of therapeutic approaches without a clear picture of how they all fit together. The Developmental Map is a conceptual framework, informed by developmental psychology, complexity theory, neuroscience, evolutionary biology, and contemplative traditions, for understanding how a human mind develops and how developmental experiences shape the presentations clinicians encounter in practice. It is designed to sit alongside, not replace, evidence-based approaches. To make it approachable, we have greatly simplified many nuances. And as a team with our own limited perspectives, we are sure to have missed some important areas. Rather than offer ideas that 'explain' the irreducible nature of our minds, our hope is that this map will impart a sense wonder, a curiosity to learn more, and inspiration to continue developing our understanding of the human mind.
Our Evolutionary Story
Our Evolutionary Story
Text button
Our Evolutionary Story
Case Formulation
Our Evolutionary Story
Text button
Our Evolutionary Story
How to Use this Map
There is no single way to use the map, here are four suggested applications: Moment-to-Moment Therapy. This map points directly toward lived human experience. In each moment a client moves through a complex stream of experiences and ways of processing experience. We can collaboratively track, mark, name, and shape arising experiences with a client moment to moment, supporting them to develop larger capacities for reflective functioning, regulation, and integration. Case Formulation. As we spend time with a client, we gather information about the patterns of their mind, beginning to form a picture of how their mind is 'organised', and how it has been 'shaped' by developmental experiences. Treatment Planning. Our framework offers the possibility to locate therapeutic modalities within the larger context of a human mind, discerning what each approach is doing within this architecture. This allows for skilful treatment planning, matching techniques and processes to what the client actually needs at this point in their development. Self-Awareness. This map is not just a map of your client, it is a map of your mind too. Through projection, co-regulation, transference, empathy, and attunement, your own mind is deeply involved with your client's. A significant line of professional maturation is the cultivation of your own mentalising, metacognitive, and reflective capacities.
We are Ecological
A human mind, much like a forest, is best understood as a dynamic web of relationships.[1] Through continuous relational exchanges with caregivers, siblings, teachers, technologies, economies, cultural practices, and ecosystems, the world shapes our minds from the outside-in, while our mind, in response, influences the world from the inside-out.[2] Something similar to a forest's flow of energy is true for a human mind: an ecology is fluid, yet it contains hierarchies. The sun's energy flows bottom-up through the ecosystem - from plants to herbivores to carnivores - while carnivores exert top-down effects by shaping the entire food chain beneath them. In a human mind, bodily unsafety has a bottom-up influence on 'higher' features such as destabilising self-esteem. While an imaginative act of perspective-taking during an argument can have a top-down influence on a 'lower' feature by regulating anger. Sensations, emotions, symbols, beliefs, and narratives form their own relational ecology within a mind.[3]From this perspective, there is no clean boundary between 'inside' and 'outside'. Mind and environment are co-creative, interdependent processes.[4] A client's presentation cannot be fully appreciated without insight into the web of relationships that shaped them - caregivers, community, culture, and broader social/ecological systems are all participants in the formation of a mind.[5][6] Therapy is itself a relational environment. The therapist's regulated and reflective presence enters the client's processing and begins to modify it from the outside-in. Research on therapeutic alliance confirms that the quality of this relational environment is one of the strongest predictors of outcome across modalities.[7]
Our Evolutionary Story
Our Evolutionary Story
Text button
Our Evolutionary Story
Individual Development
Our Evolutionary Story
Text button
Our Evolutionary Story
Symbolic Organisation
Our Evolutionary Story
Text button
Our Evolutionary Story
Clinical Application
Our Evolutionary Story
Text button
Our Evolutionary Story
Connection to Place
Our Evolutionary Story
Text button
Our Evolutionary Story
Neurobiological Correlates
Our Evolutionary Story
Text button
Our Evolutionary Story
Integration
Our Evolutionary Story
Text button
Our Evolutionary Story
Motivational Behavioural Systems
Our Evolutionary Story
Text button
Our Evolutionary Story
Clinical Application
Our Evolutionary Story
Text button
Our Evolutionary Story
Affective Systems
Our Evolutionary Story
Text button
Our Evolutionary Story
Summary of the Registers & Tiers
Our Evolutionary Story
Text button
Our Evolutionary Story
As we bring together this Developmental Map and enter into a living-breathing exchange with our clients during therapy, we need to know what we are attending to during a session moment-to-moment. Below is a very broad summary: The Four Registers of Experience These arise not as a sequence, but as a complex, fluid stream of experience for a client at any moment. They are distinct qualities, yet they are each deeply connected and influence each-other. 1. Sensate: Arousal, safety, trust, sensation, orientation, directional information. 2. Affective: Emotional, motivational, social, relational information. 3. Symbolic: Metaphorical, imaginal, pre-rational information. 4. Cognitive: Narrative, identity, reason, linguistic information. The Three Tiers of Processing Experience These are the ways a mind can engage with the arising material within their experience. 1. Raw Input: Pre-reflective, reactive, habituated, automatic, schematic processing. 2. Mentalizing: Deliberate, reflective, meaning-making, constructive processing. 3. Metacognition: Awareness and perspective of processes themselves.
Therepeutic Modalities
Our Evolutionary Story
Text button
Our Evolutionary Story
Metacognition and Mentalising
Our Evolutionary Story
Text button
Our Evolutionary Story
Our Evolutionary Story
Our Evolutionary Story
Text button
Our Evolutionary Story
Our Evolutionary Story
Our Evolutionary Story
Text button
Our Evolutionary Story
Our Evolutionary Story
Our Evolutionary Story
Text button
Our Evolutionary Story
Neurobiological Correlates
Our Evolutionary Story
Text button
Our Evolutionary Story
Individual Development
Our Evolutionary Story
Text button
Our Evolutionary Story
Attachment
Our Evolutionary Story
Text button
Our Evolutionary Story
Internalisation: 'Outside-In'
Our Evolutionary Story
Text button
Our Evolutionary Story
Neurobiological Correlates
Our Evolutionary Story
Text button
Our Evolutionary Story
Individual Development
Our Evolutionary Story
Text button
Our Evolutionary Story
Neurobiological Correlates
Our Evolutionary Story
Text button
Our Evolutionary Story
Neurobiological Correlates
Insula: As interoceptive signals propagate from posterior to anterior insula, bodily states are integrated with affective and relational meanings — making the insula the site where something present becomes re-presented. The symbolic mind emerges from the body's continuous self-representation.[1] Default Mode Network: The mPFC, posterior cingulate cortex, angular gyrus, and TPJ support self-referential thought, internal imagery, and imagination. The DMN is substantially shaped by early attachment experience — relational attunement influences the mPFC's capacity to hold self-in-relation-to-other.[2][3]
[7]
Medial temporal lobe: The hippocampus and parahippocampal gyrus integrate emotional memory with sensory imagery — the essential substrate for dream, fantasy, and metaphor formation. Memory reconsolidation research suggests that accessing symbolic representations can allow their reorganisation.[4][5] Right hemisphere: Right temporal and parietal association areas support spatial, holistic, and metaphorical meaning-making — the primary register for contextual, embodied, relational meaning. The symbolic layer is primarily right-hemispheric in character.[6]
Individual Development
Our Evolutionary Story
Text button
Our Evolutionary Story
How to Use this Map
BUTTONS
The map is organised as a series of layers which you can explore by clicking these to the right. On each layer, you can explore more topics by opening information windows by clicking these Inside a window, you will see these buttons in the bottom right corner which will show the relevant references. You will also see these buttons that reveal extra information throughout the resource.
Buttons
Your Mind
Our Evolutionary Story
Text button
Our Evolutionary Story
Individual Development
Our Evolutionary Story
Text button
Our Evolutionary Story
Regulation
Our Evolutionary Story
Text button
Our Evolutionary Story
We are Fractals
Our Evolutionary Story
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Our Evolutionary Story
Clinical Application
Our Evolutionary Story
Text button
Our Evolutionary Story
Externalisation: 'Inside-Out'
Our Evolutionary Story
Text button
Our Evolutionary Story
Therapeutic Modalities
Our Evolutionary Story
Text button
Our Evolutionary Story
Clinical Application
Our Evolutionary Story
Text button
Our Evolutionary Story
Clinical Application
Our Evolutionary Story
Text button
Our Evolutionary Story
Our Evolutionary Story
Our Evolutionary Story
Text button
Our Evolutionary Story
Neurobiological Correlates
Our Evolutionary Story
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[9]
Our Evolutionary Story
Regulation
Our Evolutionary Story
Text button
Our Evolutionary Story
A Note on Diversity of Minds
A Note on Gender
Whether presenting with neurodivergent differences such as autism or ADHD, severe and complex presentations such as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, or physical disabilities, we believe that our Developmental Map is designed to hold the incredible diversity of human minds. Though genetic factors play a very important role, we encourage that to be a starting point rather than an end. We invite a curiosity to include the larger contexts that shape each human mind: the physical place, relational histories, trauma, cultural conditioning, systemic, and ecological factors. The question is never simply what diagnosis does this person carry, but rather: given everything that shaped this person's development, why are they organised in this way at this time?[1] A particular note must be made about cultural diversity. A person's mind does not develop in isolation from their cultural context, it is formed within it. Culture shapes symbolic organisation, identity, values, relational patterns, internalised affect regulation strategies, and the underlying motivational systems through which a person orients to others and the world.[2] What reads as pathology within one cultural frame may be normative, adaptive, or meaningful within another. Formulating with genuine cultural sensitivity requires more than noting a client's background, it requires curiosity about how their cultural world has shaped their mind, and a willingness to hold our own frameworks lightly.[3] Furthermore, this kind of humility goes both ways: it asks us to reflect upon how our own cultural conditioning shapes how we interpret, categorise and respond to a client’s presentation.
Physiology
Our Evolutionary Story
Text button
Our Evolutionary Story
Individual Development
Our Evolutionary Story
Text button
Our Evolutionary Story
We are Adaptive
When a client presents with patterns that seem self-defeating - chronic anxiety, compulsive control, addiction - the clinical instinct might be to ask: What is wrong with this person? Our Developmental Map invites a different question: What was right about this response, given the environment they lived in?Within enriched environments - characterised by consistent presence, attuned responsiveness, trust, or shared joy - an individual can get their needs met, creating the conditions for 'integrated development'.[1] With safety and regulation relatively accessible, they may develop internal harmony between different parts of themselves, expanding into their higher potential and expressing themselves generatively in the world. Most individuals, however, face challenges arising from impoverished environmental factors - the presence of something harmful, or the absence of something essential.[2] Once needs are not adequately met, we begin a process of 'adaptive development': shaping ourselves to survive within the constraints of our environment. These adaptations are profoundly intelligent and representative of deep resilience.[3] However, strategies effective for survival in early impoverished environments may become enduring patterns of distress in new environments for which those strategies are no longer suited.[4] This reframing, from pathology to adaptation, invites clinical curiosity about the function of presenting patterns.[5]
Physiology
Our Evolutionary Story
Text button
Our Evolutionary Story
Important Notice
Introduction
Every clinician faces the same fundamental challenge: making sense of the person sitting across from them. What shaped this individual? Why are they suffering? And what kind of treatment will help? The proliferation of over five hundred therapeutic approaches over recent decades [1] has been both a strength and a liability. Clinicians now have access to a rich toolkit: somatic approaches, attachment-based therapies, cognitive and behavioural interventions, emotion-focused work, psychodynamic formulation, trauma-informed care, and more. Yet, without a coherent organising framework about the very thing we treat, the human mind, many clinicians navigate between their clients' complex presentations and a variety of therapeutic approaches without a clear picture of how they all fit together. The Developmental Map is a conceptual framework, informed by developmental psychology, complexity theory, neuroscience, evolutionary biology, and contemplative traditions, for understanding how a human mind develops and how developmental experiences shape the presentations clinicians encounter in practice. It is designed to sit alongside, not replace, evidence-based approaches. To make it approachable, we have greatly simplified many nuances. And as a team with our own limited perspectives, we are sure to have missed some important areas. Rather than offer ideas that 'explain' the irreducible nature of our minds, our hope is that this map will impart a sense wonder, a curiosity to learn more, and inspiration to continue developing our understanding of the human mind.
How to Use this Map
There is no single way to use the map, here are four suggested applications: Moment-to-Moment Therapy. This map points directly toward lived human experience. In each moment a client moves through a complex stream of experiences and ways of processing experience. We can collaboratively track, mark, name, and shape arising experiences with a client moment to moment, supporting them to develop larger capacities for reflective functioning, regulation, and integration. Case Formulation. As we spend time with a client, we gather information about the patterns of their mind, beginning to form a picture of how their mind is 'organised', and how it has been 'shaped' by developmental experiences. Treatment Planning. Our framework offers the possibility to locate therapeutic modalities within the larger context of a human mind, discerning what each approach is doing within this architecture. This allows for skilful treatment planning, matching techniques and processes to what the client actually needs at this point in their development. Self-Awareness. This map is not just a map of your client, it is a map of your mind too. Through projection, co-regulation, transference, empathy, and attunement, your own mind is deeply involved with your client's. A significant line of professional maturation is the cultivation of your own mentalising, metacognitive, and reflective capacities.
How to Use this Map
BUTTONS
The map is organised as a series of layers which you can explore by clicking these to the right. On each layer, you can explore more topics by opening information windows by clicking these Inside a window, you will see these buttons in the bottom right corner which will show the relevant references. You will also see these buttons that reveal extra information throughout the resource.
Buttons
A Note on Diversity of Minds
A Note on Gender
Whether presenting with neurodivergent differences such as autism or ADHD, severe and complex presentations such as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, or physical disabilities, we believe that our Developmental Map is designed to hold the incredible diversity of human minds. Though genetic factors play a very important role, we encourage that to be a starting point rather than an end. We invite a curiosity to include the larger contexts that shape each human mind: the physical place, relational histories, trauma, cultural conditioning, systemic, and ecological factors. The question is never simply what diagnosis does this person carry, but rather: given everything that shaped this person's development, why are they organised in this way at this time?[1] A particular note must be made about cultural diversity. A person's mind does not develop in isolation from their cultural context, it is formed within it. Culture shapes symbolic organisation, identity, values, relational patterns, internalised affect regulation strategies, and the underlying motivational systems through which a person orients to others and the world.[2] What reads as pathology within one cultural frame may be normative, adaptive, or meaningful within another. Formulating with genuine cultural sensitivity requires more than noting a client's background, it requires curiosity about how their cultural world has shaped their mind, and a willingness to hold our own frameworks lightly.[3] Furthermore, this kind of humility goes both ways: it asks us to reflect upon how our own cultural conditioning shapes how we interpret, categorise and respond to a client’s presentation.
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Transcript
INTRODUCTION
Introduction
How to Use
CORE PRINCIPLES
INHERITANCE
SOMATIC
AFFECTIVE
SYMBOLIC
COGNITIVE
HIGHER ORDER
AWAKENED
Diversity
Applications
THERAPY
INTRODUCTION
Introduction
How to Use
CORE PRINCIPLES
INHERITANCE
SOMATIC
AFFECTIVE
SYMBOLIC
COGNITIVE
HIGHER ORDER
AWAKENED
Diversity
Applications
THERAPY
INTRODUCTION
DEVELOPMENTAL
ADAPTIVE
CORE PRINCIPLES
INHERITANCE
SOMATIC
AFFECTIVE
WE ARE:
SYMBOLIC
COGNITIVE
HIGHER ORDER
AWAKENED
FRACTALS
ECOLOGICAL
THERAPY
INTRODUCTION
Evolution
Clinical Application
Transmission
CORE PRINCIPLES
Place
INHERITANCE
SOMATIC
AFFECTIVE
SYMBOLIC
COGNITIVE
HIGHER ORDER
AWAKENED
Development
Neurobiology
THERAPY
INTRODUCTION
Evolution
Clinical Application
Safety
CORE PRINCIPLES
Attachment
INHERITANCE
Physiology
Interoception
SOMATIC
Therapies
AFFECTIVE
SYMBOLIC
COGNITIVE
HIGHER ORDER
AWAKENED
Development
Neurobiology
THERAPY
INTRODUCTION
Evolution
Clinical Application
Affect
CORE PRINCIPLES
Motivation
INHERITANCE
Therapies
SOMATIC
AFFECTIVE
SYMBOLIC
COGNITIVE
HIGHER ORDER
AWAKENED
Neurobiology
Development
THERAPY
INTRODUCTION
Evolution
Clinical Application
Organisation
CORE PRINCIPLES
Internalisation
INHERITANCE
Externalisation
Therapies
SOMATIC
AFFECTIVE
SYMBOLIC
COGNITIVE
HIGHER ORDER
AWAKENED
Development
Neurobiology
THERAPY
INTRODUCTION
Evolution
Clinical Application
Cognition
CORE PRINCIPLES
Cognition
INHERITANCE
SOMATIC
AFFECTIVE
SYMBOLIC
COGNITIVE
HIGHER ORDER
AWAKENED
Development
Neurobiology
THERAPY
INTRODUCTION
Evolution
Clinical Application
Metacognition
CORE PRINCIPLES
Regulation
INHERITANCE
Regulation
SOMATIC
AFFECTIVE
SYMBOLIC
COGNITIVE
HIGHER ORDER
AWAKENED
Development
Neurobiology
THERAPY
INTRODUCTION
Evolution
Clinical Application
Pre vs Post
CORE PRINCIPLES
Pre vs Post
INHERITANCE
SOMATIC
AFFECTIVE
SYMBOLIC
COGNITIVE
HIGHER ORDER
AWAKENED
Development
Neurobiology
THERAPY
INTRODUCTION
Registers|Tiers|Flows
Your Mind
CORE PRINCIPLES
INHERITANCE
SOMATIC
AFFECTIVE
SYMBOLIC
COGNITIVE
HIGHER ORDER
AWAKENED
Integration
Formulation
THERAPY
We are Developmental
Our Evolutionary Story
Text button
Our Evolutionary Story
Individual Development
Our Evolutionary Story
Text button
Our Evolutionary Story
Therepeutic Modalities
Our Evolutionary Story
Text button
Our Evolutionary Story
Clinical Application
Our Evolutionary Story
Text button
Our Evolutionary Story
Our Evolutionary Story
Our Evolutionary Story
Text button
Our Evolutionary Story
Neurobiological Correlates
Our Evolutionary Story
Text button
Our Evolutionary Story
Important Notice
Introduction
Every clinician faces the same fundamental challenge: making sense of the person sitting across from them. What shaped this individual? Why are they suffering? And what kind of treatment will help? The proliferation of over five hundred therapeutic approaches over recent decades [1] has been both a strength and a liability. Clinicians now have access to a rich toolkit: somatic approaches, attachment-based therapies, cognitive and behavioural interventions, emotion-focused work, psychodynamic formulation, trauma-informed care, and more. Yet, without a coherent organising framework about the very thing we treat, the human mind, many clinicians navigate between their clients' complex presentations and a variety of therapeutic approaches without a clear picture of how they all fit together. The Developmental Map is a conceptual framework, informed by developmental psychology, complexity theory, neuroscience, evolutionary biology, and contemplative traditions, for understanding how a human mind develops and how developmental experiences shape the presentations clinicians encounter in practice. It is designed to sit alongside, not replace, evidence-based approaches. To make it approachable, we have greatly simplified many nuances. And as a team with our own limited perspectives, we are sure to have missed some important areas. Rather than offer ideas that 'explain' the irreducible nature of our minds, our hope is that this map will impart a sense wonder, a curiosity to learn more, and inspiration to continue developing our understanding of the human mind.
Our Evolutionary Story
Our Evolutionary Story
Text button
Our Evolutionary Story
Case Formulation
Our Evolutionary Story
Text button
Our Evolutionary Story
How to Use this Map
There is no single way to use the map, here are four suggested applications: Moment-to-Moment Therapy. This map points directly toward lived human experience. In each moment a client moves through a complex stream of experiences and ways of processing experience. We can collaboratively track, mark, name, and shape arising experiences with a client moment to moment, supporting them to develop larger capacities for reflective functioning, regulation, and integration. Case Formulation. As we spend time with a client, we gather information about the patterns of their mind, beginning to form a picture of how their mind is 'organised', and how it has been 'shaped' by developmental experiences. Treatment Planning. Our framework offers the possibility to locate therapeutic modalities within the larger context of a human mind, discerning what each approach is doing within this architecture. This allows for skilful treatment planning, matching techniques and processes to what the client actually needs at this point in their development. Self-Awareness. This map is not just a map of your client, it is a map of your mind too. Through projection, co-regulation, transference, empathy, and attunement, your own mind is deeply involved with your client's. A significant line of professional maturation is the cultivation of your own mentalising, metacognitive, and reflective capacities.
We are Ecological
A human mind, much like a forest, is best understood as a dynamic web of relationships.[1] Through continuous relational exchanges with caregivers, siblings, teachers, technologies, economies, cultural practices, and ecosystems, the world shapes our minds from the outside-in, while our mind, in response, influences the world from the inside-out.[2] Something similar to a forest's flow of energy is true for a human mind: an ecology is fluid, yet it contains hierarchies. The sun's energy flows bottom-up through the ecosystem - from plants to herbivores to carnivores - while carnivores exert top-down effects by shaping the entire food chain beneath them. In a human mind, bodily unsafety has a bottom-up influence on 'higher' features such as destabilising self-esteem. While an imaginative act of perspective-taking during an argument can have a top-down influence on a 'lower' feature by regulating anger. Sensations, emotions, symbols, beliefs, and narratives form their own relational ecology within a mind.[3]From this perspective, there is no clean boundary between 'inside' and 'outside'. Mind and environment are co-creative, interdependent processes.[4] A client's presentation cannot be fully appreciated without insight into the web of relationships that shaped them - caregivers, community, culture, and broader social/ecological systems are all participants in the formation of a mind.[5][6] Therapy is itself a relational environment. The therapist's regulated and reflective presence enters the client's processing and begins to modify it from the outside-in. Research on therapeutic alliance confirms that the quality of this relational environment is one of the strongest predictors of outcome across modalities.[7]
Our Evolutionary Story
Our Evolutionary Story
Text button
Our Evolutionary Story
Individual Development
Our Evolutionary Story
Text button
Our Evolutionary Story
Symbolic Organisation
Our Evolutionary Story
Text button
Our Evolutionary Story
Clinical Application
Our Evolutionary Story
Text button
Our Evolutionary Story
Connection to Place
Our Evolutionary Story
Text button
Our Evolutionary Story
Neurobiological Correlates
Our Evolutionary Story
Text button
Our Evolutionary Story
Integration
Our Evolutionary Story
Text button
Our Evolutionary Story
Motivational Behavioural Systems
Our Evolutionary Story
Text button
Our Evolutionary Story
Clinical Application
Our Evolutionary Story
Text button
Our Evolutionary Story
Affective Systems
Our Evolutionary Story
Text button
Our Evolutionary Story
Summary of the Registers & Tiers
Our Evolutionary Story
Text button
Our Evolutionary Story
As we bring together this Developmental Map and enter into a living-breathing exchange with our clients during therapy, we need to know what we are attending to during a session moment-to-moment. Below is a very broad summary: The Four Registers of Experience These arise not as a sequence, but as a complex, fluid stream of experience for a client at any moment. They are distinct qualities, yet they are each deeply connected and influence each-other. 1. Sensate: Arousal, safety, trust, sensation, orientation, directional information. 2. Affective: Emotional, motivational, social, relational information. 3. Symbolic: Metaphorical, imaginal, pre-rational information. 4. Cognitive: Narrative, identity, reason, linguistic information. The Three Tiers of Processing Experience These are the ways a mind can engage with the arising material within their experience. 1. Raw Input: Pre-reflective, reactive, habituated, automatic, schematic processing. 2. Mentalizing: Deliberate, reflective, meaning-making, constructive processing. 3. Metacognition: Awareness and perspective of processes themselves.
Therepeutic Modalities
Our Evolutionary Story
Text button
Our Evolutionary Story
Metacognition and Mentalising
Our Evolutionary Story
Text button
Our Evolutionary Story
Our Evolutionary Story
Our Evolutionary Story
Text button
Our Evolutionary Story
Our Evolutionary Story
Our Evolutionary Story
Text button
Our Evolutionary Story
Our Evolutionary Story
Our Evolutionary Story
Text button
Our Evolutionary Story
Neurobiological Correlates
Our Evolutionary Story
Text button
Our Evolutionary Story
Individual Development
Our Evolutionary Story
Text button
Our Evolutionary Story
Attachment
Our Evolutionary Story
Text button
Our Evolutionary Story
Internalisation: 'Outside-In'
Our Evolutionary Story
Text button
Our Evolutionary Story
Neurobiological Correlates
Our Evolutionary Story
Text button
Our Evolutionary Story
Individual Development
Our Evolutionary Story
Text button
Our Evolutionary Story
Neurobiological Correlates
Our Evolutionary Story
Text button
Our Evolutionary Story
Neurobiological Correlates
Insula: As interoceptive signals propagate from posterior to anterior insula, bodily states are integrated with affective and relational meanings — making the insula the site where something present becomes re-presented. The symbolic mind emerges from the body's continuous self-representation.[1] Default Mode Network: The mPFC, posterior cingulate cortex, angular gyrus, and TPJ support self-referential thought, internal imagery, and imagination. The DMN is substantially shaped by early attachment experience — relational attunement influences the mPFC's capacity to hold self-in-relation-to-other.[2][3]
[7]
Medial temporal lobe: The hippocampus and parahippocampal gyrus integrate emotional memory with sensory imagery — the essential substrate for dream, fantasy, and metaphor formation. Memory reconsolidation research suggests that accessing symbolic representations can allow their reorganisation.[4][5] Right hemisphere: Right temporal and parietal association areas support spatial, holistic, and metaphorical meaning-making — the primary register for contextual, embodied, relational meaning. The symbolic layer is primarily right-hemispheric in character.[6]
Individual Development
Our Evolutionary Story
Text button
Our Evolutionary Story
How to Use this Map
BUTTONS
The map is organised as a series of layers which you can explore by clicking these to the right. On each layer, you can explore more topics by opening information windows by clicking these Inside a window, you will see these buttons in the bottom right corner which will show the relevant references. You will also see these buttons that reveal extra information throughout the resource.
Buttons
Your Mind
Our Evolutionary Story
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Our Evolutionary Story
Individual Development
Our Evolutionary Story
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Our Evolutionary Story
Regulation
Our Evolutionary Story
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Our Evolutionary Story
We are Fractals
Our Evolutionary Story
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Our Evolutionary Story
Clinical Application
Our Evolutionary Story
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Our Evolutionary Story
Externalisation: 'Inside-Out'
Our Evolutionary Story
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Our Evolutionary Story
Therapeutic Modalities
Our Evolutionary Story
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Our Evolutionary Story
Clinical Application
Our Evolutionary Story
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Our Evolutionary Story
Clinical Application
Our Evolutionary Story
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Our Evolutionary Story
Our Evolutionary Story
Our Evolutionary Story
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Our Evolutionary Story
Neurobiological Correlates
Our Evolutionary Story
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[9]
Our Evolutionary Story
Regulation
Our Evolutionary Story
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Our Evolutionary Story
A Note on Diversity of Minds
A Note on Gender
Whether presenting with neurodivergent differences such as autism or ADHD, severe and complex presentations such as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, or physical disabilities, we believe that our Developmental Map is designed to hold the incredible diversity of human minds. Though genetic factors play a very important role, we encourage that to be a starting point rather than an end. We invite a curiosity to include the larger contexts that shape each human mind: the physical place, relational histories, trauma, cultural conditioning, systemic, and ecological factors. The question is never simply what diagnosis does this person carry, but rather: given everything that shaped this person's development, why are they organised in this way at this time?[1] A particular note must be made about cultural diversity. A person's mind does not develop in isolation from their cultural context, it is formed within it. Culture shapes symbolic organisation, identity, values, relational patterns, internalised affect regulation strategies, and the underlying motivational systems through which a person orients to others and the world.[2] What reads as pathology within one cultural frame may be normative, adaptive, or meaningful within another. Formulating with genuine cultural sensitivity requires more than noting a client's background, it requires curiosity about how their cultural world has shaped their mind, and a willingness to hold our own frameworks lightly.[3] Furthermore, this kind of humility goes both ways: it asks us to reflect upon how our own cultural conditioning shapes how we interpret, categorise and respond to a client’s presentation.
Physiology
Our Evolutionary Story
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Our Evolutionary Story
Individual Development
Our Evolutionary Story
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Our Evolutionary Story
We are Adaptive
When a client presents with patterns that seem self-defeating - chronic anxiety, compulsive control, addiction - the clinical instinct might be to ask: What is wrong with this person? Our Developmental Map invites a different question: What was right about this response, given the environment they lived in?Within enriched environments - characterised by consistent presence, attuned responsiveness, trust, or shared joy - an individual can get their needs met, creating the conditions for 'integrated development'.[1] With safety and regulation relatively accessible, they may develop internal harmony between different parts of themselves, expanding into their higher potential and expressing themselves generatively in the world. Most individuals, however, face challenges arising from impoverished environmental factors - the presence of something harmful, or the absence of something essential.[2] Once needs are not adequately met, we begin a process of 'adaptive development': shaping ourselves to survive within the constraints of our environment. These adaptations are profoundly intelligent and representative of deep resilience.[3] However, strategies effective for survival in early impoverished environments may become enduring patterns of distress in new environments for which those strategies are no longer suited.[4] This reframing, from pathology to adaptation, invites clinical curiosity about the function of presenting patterns.[5]
Physiology
Our Evolutionary Story
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Our Evolutionary Story
Important Notice
Introduction
Every clinician faces the same fundamental challenge: making sense of the person sitting across from them. What shaped this individual? Why are they suffering? And what kind of treatment will help? The proliferation of over five hundred therapeutic approaches over recent decades [1] has been both a strength and a liability. Clinicians now have access to a rich toolkit: somatic approaches, attachment-based therapies, cognitive and behavioural interventions, emotion-focused work, psychodynamic formulation, trauma-informed care, and more. Yet, without a coherent organising framework about the very thing we treat, the human mind, many clinicians navigate between their clients' complex presentations and a variety of therapeutic approaches without a clear picture of how they all fit together. The Developmental Map is a conceptual framework, informed by developmental psychology, complexity theory, neuroscience, evolutionary biology, and contemplative traditions, for understanding how a human mind develops and how developmental experiences shape the presentations clinicians encounter in practice. It is designed to sit alongside, not replace, evidence-based approaches. To make it approachable, we have greatly simplified many nuances. And as a team with our own limited perspectives, we are sure to have missed some important areas. Rather than offer ideas that 'explain' the irreducible nature of our minds, our hope is that this map will impart a sense wonder, a curiosity to learn more, and inspiration to continue developing our understanding of the human mind.
How to Use this Map
There is no single way to use the map, here are four suggested applications: Moment-to-Moment Therapy. This map points directly toward lived human experience. In each moment a client moves through a complex stream of experiences and ways of processing experience. We can collaboratively track, mark, name, and shape arising experiences with a client moment to moment, supporting them to develop larger capacities for reflective functioning, regulation, and integration. Case Formulation. As we spend time with a client, we gather information about the patterns of their mind, beginning to form a picture of how their mind is 'organised', and how it has been 'shaped' by developmental experiences. Treatment Planning. Our framework offers the possibility to locate therapeutic modalities within the larger context of a human mind, discerning what each approach is doing within this architecture. This allows for skilful treatment planning, matching techniques and processes to what the client actually needs at this point in their development. Self-Awareness. This map is not just a map of your client, it is a map of your mind too. Through projection, co-regulation, transference, empathy, and attunement, your own mind is deeply involved with your client's. A significant line of professional maturation is the cultivation of your own mentalising, metacognitive, and reflective capacities.
How to Use this Map
BUTTONS
The map is organised as a series of layers which you can explore by clicking these to the right. On each layer, you can explore more topics by opening information windows by clicking these Inside a window, you will see these buttons in the bottom right corner which will show the relevant references. You will also see these buttons that reveal extra information throughout the resource.
Buttons
A Note on Diversity of Minds
A Note on Gender
Whether presenting with neurodivergent differences such as autism or ADHD, severe and complex presentations such as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, or physical disabilities, we believe that our Developmental Map is designed to hold the incredible diversity of human minds. Though genetic factors play a very important role, we encourage that to be a starting point rather than an end. We invite a curiosity to include the larger contexts that shape each human mind: the physical place, relational histories, trauma, cultural conditioning, systemic, and ecological factors. The question is never simply what diagnosis does this person carry, but rather: given everything that shaped this person's development, why are they organised in this way at this time?[1] A particular note must be made about cultural diversity. A person's mind does not develop in isolation from their cultural context, it is formed within it. Culture shapes symbolic organisation, identity, values, relational patterns, internalised affect regulation strategies, and the underlying motivational systems through which a person orients to others and the world.[2] What reads as pathology within one cultural frame may be normative, adaptive, or meaningful within another. Formulating with genuine cultural sensitivity requires more than noting a client's background, it requires curiosity about how their cultural world has shaped their mind, and a willingness to hold our own frameworks lightly.[3] Furthermore, this kind of humility goes both ways: it asks us to reflect upon how our own cultural conditioning shapes how we interpret, categorise and respond to a client’s presentation.