THE PSYCHOSOMATIC CODE OF THE LIVING
by Diego Frigoli

Analogy and Symbols as Integrative Aspects of the Relationship between Man, Nature and Reality

"Complexity" and Man
At the end of the 20th century, the view of nature and of man's reality is increasingly getting based on the "awareness of a mutual relation and interdependence of physical, biological, psychological, social and cultural elements" (1). According to scientists and researchers, the interaction between man and his physical, psychological or social environment determines a never-ending exchange of information that shows us the extreme complexity of the real world, with the consequent difficulty in understanding it through the rules of a deterministic approach.
The traditional scientific inquire was able to go beyond the appearance of reality in order to pick up the basic principles and general laws on which the physical rules of the world were built. On the contrary at present, modern science, after improving Quantum Theory, Molecular Biology and Psychoanalysis, wonders about dependence and autonomy in its investigative job about life. "The development of scientific knowledge suddenly brought to a critical state the method that had promoted its growth"(2): thus a critical reflection started and it centred on the opportunity to describe the complexity of the phenomena world by using simplified deterministic laws. The result of this process was featured by a new logical approach, that thinks about reality as a complex system, denying an excessively simplified analysis. In fact reality is so wide that we can't understand it just through the means of our intelligence; we can catch it only by melting our bright thought with the dark contents of our emotions, in order to build a subjective empathic-cognitive pattern, capable of communicating with the world.
It is also true that researchers have to face this "complexity" at different levels. Complex thought, leading man towards a new approach to reality, "should fulfil many conditions for its existence: it should connect the object to the subject and its environment; it should examine the object, not only as an object, but also as a system/organisation posing the complex problems of organisation; it should respect the multi-dimensionality of beings and things; it should work/talk with uncertainty, with irrationality; it should not disintegrate the world of phenomena, but try to consider it as less mutilated as possible" (3).
The multiciplity of reality, its proper complexity, can be analysed through the construction of a "new science", able to interpret phenomena, no more tied to the ethos, that manipulates simplicity but rather linked to the recognition of complexity. This attitude will lead us to a different knowledge, involving not only the importance of rationality, but also the pregnancy of the irrational value of empathy. No doubt, the problem of complexity pushes scientists to overcome the dilemma of the quantitative concept of modern science, allowing them to get in touch with the qualitative aspects of reality, arbitrarily attributed to human sciences. The syncretistic view of the complexity idea introduces a modern cosmology of unity, implying that besides the formal level inquired by science, including material reality, there are "entities" that cannot be overlooked, such as psychological, social and cultural facts, lying over the most concrete aspects of reality. This unitary vision of reality gives way to a "circular" and "synchronic" logic. "Circular" means that the pattern of relationships and references could be intuitively caught only once the detecting mind has overcome the linear mode of rationality; "synchronic" refers to analytical psychology, and underlines the immediacy and uniqueness of empirical knowledge. Along the cognitive process of complex events, the prominence of rational thought has been surpassed, because the complexity of the examined phenomenon involves so wholly the inquiring subject, to transform it deeply.
The Islamic tradition asserts that there are three levels of knowledge: the first, called "knowledge of certainty" ('ilm al-yaqîn), is similar to the listening to a fire description and can be analogically compared with the method used by classical physics to describe phenomena, restoring them to their basic principles; the second, called "eye of certainty" ('ayn al-yaqîn), is similar to the looking at the fire and can be metaphorically compared with the Quantum Theory, that observes the complexity of reality; the third, called "truth of certainty" (haqq al-yaqîn), is similar to the fact of being burnt and can be compared to the study of complex phenomena transforming those who face them; in fact this knowledge involves not only rational thought but also the circular and synchronic ones.
The inner meaning of "complexity" suggests an approach to reality which, far from being simplified, opens to the contemporary view of all the multistratifications existing in the phenomenon at issue. The complexity based on these superimpositions of events, needs a no more linear descriptive logic (peculiar to the rational thought), but a circular one, as already stated. Consequently analogy is to be regarded as the closest logical figure which may allow the possibility of 'circular thought'. The original meaning of analogy expresses an identity of connections linking two by two the terms of two or more couples. If, for instance,

A   C
-- = --
B   D

we can say that A is to B as C is to D. To be more precise, quantities to be compared in analogical terms are to be homologous. Analogy imposes a ' direct link between elements that work in equivalent manners' (4), through their qualities and in connection, obviously, with the objects they are part of.
More deeply, analogy works out three basic tasks:
1. Heuristic function, referring to its contribution to the process of invention of a hypothesis
2. Synthetic function, in order to make different possibilities converge towards a single direction;
3. Evocative function: which temporarily stops logical judgement, in favour of an 'ecstatic feeling of astonishment'(5).
Therefore, we can say that analogy holds in itself the opportunity to condense in a single system the data of the functions proper to logical thought with the irrational and emotional contents, decisive for the heuristic process. In fact, there can be no creative process of task hypotheses without the use of analogy. 'Analogies are not secondary underpinnings in theory build-up, but their essential parts. It has been often suggested that analogy leads to the conceptualisation of theories, but once theory has been defined, analogy can be left apart: this is a false suggestion.' (6) If, within the epistemological field, analogy is fundamental in the heuristic process, from a psychological point of view analogy represents the logical mode, by which the unconscious expresses itself (primary process), ' opposed to the typical working mode of consciousness, supported by the secondary process'(7).
Along with the most recent developments in logic and system theory, applied to the distinction between conscious and unconscious systems, studied by Matte Blanco, it has been stated that the conscious system undergoes classical Aristotelian logic, ruled by identity and non-contradiction principles; on the contrary, the unconscious is submitted to a different but anyhow coherent logic: it is a logic based on generalisation and symmetry, less known and employed principles. The generalisation principle shows that the unconscious system works with individuals (people, ideas, objects) as if they were parts or elements of a class or set. For instance, one patient's personal features disappear and are assimilated in the "man" class to which he belongs: if this patient has got a problem with someone else, that conflict is extended to all human beings. The symmetry principle says that the unconscious system treats the opposite relation of any connection, as if it were identical to the connection itself. In other words, it treats asymmetrical relations as if they were symmetric. For example: if "John" is "Peter's" brother, the inverted relation is: "Peter" is "John's" brother (symmetric relation); but, if "John" is "Peter's" father, the inverted relation is: "Peter" is "John's" son (asymmetrical relation). The unconscious treats all asymmetrical relations as if they were symmetric; that's why in the example above "Peter" is no more "John's" son, but he could also be "John's father". Therefore, according to Matte Blanco, we can say that the cognitive function of the psychic apparatus is the result of the meeting of the generalisation and symmetry principles with the rules of the Aristotelian logic. We can affirm that the structure of the unconscious is the translation of conscious thought, not far from logic, provided with a contribution even much wider in terms of dimensions than conscious logic and, consequently, more general. That's why conscious logic is only one partial possibility among the many which may be expressed by unconscious thought. According to the communication theory, Matte Blanco's "bi-logic", derived from the interaction between the logic of conscious thought and of the one referring to the unconscious, is explained through the existence of two languages: a "logical-numerical" and an "analogical" one. 'The numerical language (referring to consciousness) has a very complicated, but efficient, logical syntax, but it lacks an adequate semantics in the relationship field; on the contrary, the analogical language has got a semantics, but not an adequate syntax to define the nature of relations in a specific way' (9).
It is clear, as stated above, that there is a close relation between the bipolar concept of inner life, structured in conscious and unconscious, secondary and primary process, and the numerical and analogical communicative models. According to these observations, we can assert that analogy represents a kind of "open logic", covering the whole universe and we can affirm that the principle of causality is just one of its particular aspects. In fact, while the logical causality thought proceeds in a linear way in deducing its links, towards a final judgement, " analogical thought" has a circular progress, because it continuously widens the order of its conclusions, following the connection logic that links in their succession unexpected events, constantly changing the logical order of deductions along a creative process. We could metaphorically say that analogy is a circle while logical-causalistic thought is a range of lines inside a circle; more than that, in a complex system perspective, it could be compared to polygons within the circle, provided with more and more sides as they get closer to the external circumference. Complex phenomena, in this case, would coincide with the tendency of the inscribed polygons to become circles in the example above; the circularity so intercepted could be the expression of the global unity of the unconscious, and not of rationality. It might be objected that, if analogical circularity is the main characteristic of the unconscious function, it could never be reached unless getting completely unconscious, and so running the risk of a dangerous regression on the consciousness level. Referring to the above metaphor about polygons representing rationality, circularity can be considered as the final result of the rational tendency to reflect on its appliance to reality the reaching of interpretative models quite close to unconscious topics; in the same way inside the rules of unconscious logic there are rules understandable by consciousness. It is not by chance, that many nuclear physicians have reached paradoxical conclusions in scientific areas, more proper to an intuitive comprehension than to a rational one.
The approach to complex phenomena involves a continuous fluctuating of thought between the analogical dimension and the logical-causalistic one: the result is a no more fragmented description of reality. This is due to the fact that analogy is characterised by a plastic peculiarity, allowing thought to link events which apparently have nothing to do with one another with the result of creating a model "open" to any new information. However, in order to create a heuristic widening of the state of consciousness, this model should be structured according to logical-causality rules. These last represent an unavoidable frame to allow the heuristic function to be evocative, and in the same time, not to fragmentize consciousness itself. It is only in this perspective that we can say we have attained a new knowledge of complex phenomena, at last more understandable, thanks to an investigative mind now connected to the logic of events. Symbol and Intuition In the first chapter analogy has been emphasised as a basic premise to allow the investigative mind to lead complex phenomena to a standard, understandable to the Ego. In the present chapter we will focus on the relationships that analogy entertains both with symbols and with intuitive skill.
'Founding hermeneutics' (10) consider the imaginative aspects of a drive or instinct, not only through their semiotic expression, but also considering their virtual and archetypal "shape". Within this kind of hermeneutics, an important role is played by the symbolic function, and its ability to unify conscious and unconscious. The etymology of the word "symbol" comes from the Greek syn-ballein and means "to join together". At the beginning, the syn-bolon was an identification mark, an object made of different materials, signifying hospitality from family to family and from town to town; the object was divided into two halves, that once put together again, allowed the bearers of its parts to recognise their belonging to the same clan. This unifying function was also applied to thinking processes, so that 'symbolism turns phenomena into ideas, ideas into images, therefore letting an idea inside an image be always active and unreachable' (11). For this reason, G. Durand states that a symbol, opposite to a sign, possesses an open logic. 'In a sign, meaning is limited and significant is endless, even when arbitrary; in an allegory we have the translation of a defined meaning through a limited significant. In the syn-bolon the two terms are infinitely open" (12) .
The significant of a symbol is its visible half, i.e. its iconographical shape, while the real meaning of a symbol is hidden in its invisible half, in which lies the multidimensionality of infinite meanings, open to any interpretation. A symbol, then, is a real "infinite inside the finite", and its peculiarity is to convey a significance rich of many meanings, in such a manner that H. Corbin affirms that a symbol can 'never be explained once and for all, but it always needs to be decoded once more, just like a musical score, that is never totally interpreted, but always needs a new performance'. (13) Therefore, the visible and the invisible are intersected within the symbol in a transparent and dynamical reality, whose detectable "shape" - the significant - is dissolved in endless meanings, which little by little make understandable what appears as a mystery. On these bases, H. Fischer-Barnicol asserts that: 'in a real object, through the symbol, a transcendent, invisible and untouchable force, can be revealed. In other words: a symbol is a material reality, and its configuration allows a dynamic and spiritual reality to show itself. An overspatial and overtemporal element fleetingly gleams from a matter, extraneous to its nature. Consequently, the symbol as an object does not coincide with the symbolised reality. The symbol is only a mean of exteriorization that allows a force, not sensitively recognizable, to make its action become evident, similarly to the human soul with respect to body and language'.(14) Fischer-Barnicol's superspatial and supertemporal force is referred to the archetype, for all that concerns complex phenomena about man and nature.
The archetype, a term found in late-Hellenic philosophy, showed the original model of shapes, of which perceptible things are just copies. Nowadays, in analytical psychology, archetypes are the "aprioristic forms" that organise experience: for this reason they have been defined either as regulators of representations or as models of innate behaviour. With regards to man and nature, these archetypes may be found both in the phylogenetic aspects of "life" phenomena, or in its mental representations, existing in human psyche. Through symbolism, man can approach the knowledge of an archetypal dimension, that shows itself in the contemporaneity of physical events, instinctual behaviours and in the mental forms supported by facts - the meaning of reality.

By using an analogy linked to the light spectrum (see Picture above), Carl Gustav Jung has summarised the relationship between archetype and instinctual behaviour, on one side, and the corresponding psychic images, on the other. The "ultraviolet" pole and the "infrared" pole, are terms analogically used as thought models. The whole psychosoma concerning man, and in a wider sense all the universe, could be assimilated to the light spectrum. The "infrared" pole in man is closer to psychosomatic processes, which may result in somatic aspects of instinctual behaviours and material events; in the "ultraviolet pole", instead, the psychic aspects prevail as "images", "representations", and thoughts. This analogy could be applied to "complex" structures which on a side possess a concrete aspect due to the systemic structure of the model and, on the other, collect psychological, social and cultural values, whose field of study goes beyond the traditionally scientific one. Now, along with the logic-causality pattern that sustains the conscious function, analogy, as the logic structure of thought, can be considered the fundamental axis of symbol (the part supporting the work of its obscure half ); therefore, it is unavoidable to consider the symbol as the synthesis of the two operative psychic aspects above discussed, the key-stone to the study of natural phenomena and of their complexity. The operative peculiarity of a symbol that, joining together conscious and unconscious, allows the psyche to reach a new, more ordered and less troubled dimension, has (not by chance) been defined by Jung as 'transcendent function'.
Confirming the link between symbols and analogy, there will be further structural and dynamical considerations about their functional mode. In fact, whereas analogy represents an "informative field", apt to build up the heuristic function, and thus defining a new cognitive space, a similar "informative field" is represented by the symbol, in its power to join opposite aspects belonging to different "conscious fields". More than that, analogy allows the psyche to build an auto-regulating game of references, linking images not quite obviously related with one another: for instance, the analogy between elements apparently separated but connected by the same rhythm , such as hair, thoughts, waves, sea-waters, tears, etc.; instead the symbol allows unconscious energy, and its corresponding visions, to enter consciousness, without forcing unconscious contents. Such a function is defined as "transforming ability", 'the numinous core of primary unconscious images'(16). Dreaming of killing a relative, for example, in order to express the need to get rid of a dependent condition, is quite different from fancying the person dominating us being on the point of leaving for a no-return journey. Symbol and analogy are the basic axes to let our psyche neatly reach unconscious phenomena, even complex ones concerning man and nature. It is clear there is a close relationship linking a symbol, analogy, and intuition. Intuition, which is the comprehension of an event with no intellectual mediation, drives the investigating psyche directly towards the centre of reality, picking it up sympathetically, almost getting into what is unique and inexpressible.
'On the contrary, analysis - H. Bergson remarks - infinitely multiplies its views, to complete a representation never completed, with an inexhaustible desire to embrace the object around which it is obliged to move'.(18) 'Analogical intuition is the phenomenological action that neither looks for the cause nor for its consequences, but which always tries to wear all the content out'(19). Some psychologists treat intuition as a thinking aspect peculiar to children between 3 and 6 years of age, when the ability to define concepts only goes through empirically showing tools by use, and in a personal context; researchers of other areas, in phylogenetic studies about intuition, judge that it is a Gestalt's faculty to know the world. 'I affirm that gestaltic perception is identical to the mysterious function of intuition, that with no doubt is one of the most cognitive faculties of man. When a scientist is faced by a plenty of apparently incompatible facts, and suddenly 'sees' the regularity that links them together, he understands that what was inexplicable becomes clear as a revelation. We can compare this kind of experience to a Gestalt, hidden in a puzzle, generally considered as a privilege proper to artists and poets, that emerges unexpectedly by the backstage chaos [...]: intuition carries on a fundamental role in every inductively-processed research, even in the most rigorous one. It has been proved that no important scientific discovery was done without an intuitive Gestalt perception. Without intuition, the world would present itself to us as a disconnected accumulation of events. We couldn't understand laws and pre-eminent rules of such chaos, if we only trusted our mind's conscious mathematical and statistical operations, with no aid from the Gestalt-perceptive computer, active in our unconscious level. In fact, as every other specialised types of Gestalt perception, intuition simultaneously keeps in account a higher number of premises than what is normally possible to any conscious thinking process '(20).
In this perspective, intuition is a complex faculty of the psyche, the only one able to conjugate in itself the irrational unconscious aspects and the rational conscious ones, according to a rule that allows the global interpretation of phenomena. Intuition is the only faculty that can enable man to catch the variety of reality and the complexity of nature, through the global perception of the network of informative relations. This unifying perception allows to conceptualise all single aspects of reality in an important set, assimilated by memory and compared with data based upon experience, until the transformation of the investigating mind takes place. For the superimposition features towards a trend to unity and for the transformation of sensorial data, intuition is strictly bound to the symbol and to analogy; for this reason they represent the psychic modes able to understand complex phenomena. To study the "complex" phenomenon of man and nature and, in a more abstract sense, of reality, we need the preliminary condition of a gestaltic "sight", peculiar to the intuitive faculty, without which any phenomenon would be "fragmented" in its parts. This complete function of an insight into reality is the same one present in the symbol, thanks to the features of the "opened" link, offered by analogy. Therefore, concerning the approach to complexity phenomena, analogy, symbol and intuition can be considered as apparently different aspects of the same thinking process. By its "open" logic, analogy allows to build general unifying models, even though unconscious; the symbol turns these unconscious models into systems understandable to consciousness; intuition picks up the immediacy of this transformation, allowing the enrichment of the psyche, through the amplification of consciousness.

A new Weltanschauung: Ecobiopsychology
We have just examined how modern science has submitted nature and man to a process of continuous dissociation, 'sacrificing a lot of what we consider the reality of the world, in favour of mathematical schemes that have only advantaged us in manipulating matter, on a quantity pattern'(21) ; the final result is the loss of the quality of life and its value. 'If today the "domination on nature" has caused overpopulation, the lack of "breathing room", the coagulation and congestion of life in large cities, the exhaustion of natural resources, the decay of the biologic environment through machines and their by-products, the outspread of mental diseases, and many other accidents, some of them irremediable'(22), there is no doubt that to overcome the suffocating environment of "matter", created by the hybris of machine civilisation, man must re-discover a global vision of the world and a very close connection with nature, intended as the cosmos, that talks to man in an apparently new, but ancient language. The relationship with nature, once an endless dialogue, has been nowadays substituted by man with an egocentric and narcissistic monologue, and Nature has become something alien and less important. Every attempt to re-establish the ancient alliance is condemned, for it is either despised as a "primitive" going back to an empathic attitude towards nature, or considered as an "animistic" or "pantheistic" attitude apt to overcome the distance from the natural world. Through the loss of certitude about the complete view of the cosmos, man has discovered a set of events that he can control and measure as he likes. 'But, in this new guise of "deity on earth", that reflects no more its transcendent archetype, man is menaced to be devoured by the same Earth which he seems to rule'(23).
World reality nowadays speaks to man by using reasons of "complexity", the new paradigm that indicates the need for a global view of the cosmos; it obliges everybody to push back the fragmented sight of scientific materialism, in favour of a re-discovery of metaphysical principles, the only ones able to overcome scepticism towards the vision of reality . By "metaphysical principles", we do not mean the absurd connection of human and scientific data, often leading to a degeneration of a sort of mysticism, with no evolution for man; on the contrary, we mean the study of the archetypal function of the symbol, of its prerogatives linked to the information theory, with its tendency to neg-entropy for consciousness, and its importance as "regulating factor" for the Ego and for the development of the Ego along the Self path. By metaphysics, instead, we mean the traditional science of symbols: it inspires and settles the universal values of empirical scientific discoveries, and allows to integrate psychological values with real data which, within the symbols that they possess, lead to the amplification of man's consciousness. It is better than bio-ethics, which is usually shaped as a set of moral troubles having to do with the general relations between science and life, with solutions centred on the conscious survival of the Ego; more than that bio-ethics has often overlooked the belief of the multiple state of being, such as cosmic correspondences and symbols, once the heritage of "universal" sciences, for instance alchemy. The need for a re-discovery of archetypal principles and traditional symbolism allows scientific investigations to speak a language no more alien to the consciousness of man, giving him a role nearer to the natural world. In fact, all modern scientific improvements are horizontal, on the material and concrete plan of existence, even in the case of galactic matter, and it is for this reason that they do not touch other levels of life. On the other hand, human intelligence, and its consciousness, is speculative and it is composed by a subtle "matter", which can be hardly integrated with the reality examined by science. Human intellect is open to the Infinite or the Absolute, while science is addressed to the indefinite and the relative. Only by the symbolic function it is possible to start a synthesis process, allowing to legitimate scientific knowledge no more as "relative", but as a continuum that strictly ties nature with the human psyche.
The symbol could work out the vital task of connecting modern science with the archetypal principles that have ruled Man and Nature ever since; it therefore can go beyond all partial and fragmented views, in order to introduce an effective gnosis, able to find out archetypes everywhere. This operation implies the carrying out of a process of sanctification of the cosmos; it will lead to develop the tendency towards a global vision of reality, inside the human psyche; concerning man's individual existence, it represents the reflection of the archetypal function of the Self, the inner regulating factor that can fight the emptiness and nihilism of modern man's Ego. In fact, we will be enabled to see the dynamic reality of archetypes in the world complexity if we understand symbolic language: this way we will find out the synchronic concordances among natural world shapes, colours, life pictures, to discover them as sediments in the human body, disguised as functions, organs and apparatuses; archetypes will be made active in the symbolic pictures of human imagination. 'Educating men to such an interpretation of symbols does not mean to deny reality. It means instead to reveal the knowledge of another aspect of things, more real and more strictly connected to the roots of existence, than their evident qualities and quantitative aspects, that are the central points of modern scientific research. Teaching that a tree shows the several states of being, or that the mountain is a symbol for cosmos, or that the sun is the symbol for the intelligible principles of the universe, does not mean to diminish botanical, geological and astronomical discoveries. If nature is to regain its meaning, if the relation between man and nature is to be saved from incumbent dangers, symbolic consciousness must be produced not as a fancy, but as a science linked to the ontological roots of things'(24) . The investigation on the relationship between Man and Nature, intended as above, has brought researchers to develop a complex program, that could be considered eco-biopsychological. Eco-Biopsychology is a new discipline aimed at connecting the semiotic codes referring to the infinite forms of the living world, and their languages (ecological aspect) to the analogous languages of the human body where, in fact, the ontogenesis and the phylogenesis of the so-called biological world are summarised; it is possible to re-discover the relationship between the "world" and human bios, in the cultural and psychological aspects of the "world" itself, thanks to myths, history of religions and collective images of mankind (psychological aspect) (25).
For instance, we can trace a link between the destruction of Amazonic forests, its consequent carbon dioxide increase (ecological aspect) which has provoked lung diseases, such as breathing allergies and asthma (biological aspect), and the enormous number of panic attacks, peculiar to our present world (psychological aspect); this is not an intellectual virtuosity, but a scientific event towards which our attention should be driven. After a deep analysis, if we consider the vegetable kingdom, we can affirm that carbon dioxide is absorbed by plants leaves, that contribute to form carbohydrate through the clorofillian photosynthesis. During this process, oxygen is freed into the atmosphere. Man's lungs, as symbolic "leaves", anabolically utilise oxygen, that for plants is a catabolic product. Therefore, we can assert that, in respect to breathing gases CO2/O2, human lungs and plants leaves work in an inverted way(26). In breathing allergies, in asthma and even in emphysema there is a breathing spasm, characterised by an increase of carbon dioxide in lungs residual air and in blood(27). Just as it happens in the vegetable world, there is an operation that moves the balance of respiratory gases towards carbon dioxide. In panic attacks, getting more and more numerous in civilised countries, carbon dioxide is again the reason of the crisis, because neuronal receptors seem to react to that gas (28). We have summarised data from ecology, pneumology, and modern psychiatry. Thanks to the contribution of the heuristic function of analogy and to the symbol stimulus, the eco-biopsychological method can link apparently far events, belonging to different semiotic codes, in order to build a unifying analysis and reflection model. Certainly, if generally speaking the world is going towards a carbon dioxide increase, the human psyche will observe ancient fancies of "suffocation", sedimented in our unconscious, with the consequent spurt of uncontrolled aggressiveness: this is individually represented by panic attacks, and collectively evident in the destructive expressions of modern society. In our unconscious, it is not possible to arbitrarily manipulate the chemical composition of air, without inducing inner changes in the human psyche, because the so-called "breathing atmosphere" outside, in our psyche corresponds to the balance in our outward relationships.(29)
In fact, if any of us has his/her own individuality with respect to the Ego, we are in contact with the entire world with respect to breath.(30)(31) Through inspired and expired air our emotions are projected into the world, and when we feel suffocated by a too overwhelming psychological surrounding, we need "a good breath of air" to recover. The breathing dimension, linked to the oxygen life-cycle, has not casually been celebrated in all cultures as the most important point for the survival of human spirit. Psychoanalysts have remarked breathing anguishes, affirming that air is the 'Milk of the Universe'(32) . Altering such a relation means to let devastating death and "suffocation" fears emerge, owing to a reduced breathing vital space, with obvious consequences related to the aggressive approaches with the outside world. On these conceptual bases of systemic and complex investigation, Eco-Biopsychology has begun to regard the roles of Aids and cancer as detectors of the uneasiness of western society. Diseases of immunity reveal a deep collective difficulty in a symbolic and concrete sense, expressed by an alteration of the phylogenetic structure, responsible for the recognition processes of the internal environment of organism (33). Modern Psycho-neuro-endocrino-immunology(34), recent psychosomatic model relating stress events with organic alterations, is wondering about the psychological loss of collective identity, and the real effect is the emerging of diseases regarding the immunity system. The eco-biopsychological approach, linking altogether environment, human body, and its psychological appearances, begins to give a no more abstract epistemological answer to the dilemmas of modern man. To consider the environment not only as one of the several "loci" to be protected and conserved, but as the unavoidable aspect of a complex macrosystem, permits to the human body to undertake the role of microcosm, analogical with respect to the rules of the macrocosm universe: as a macrosystem, we should consider phylogenesis as a sedimented function in the embryological ontogenesis of man and, more than that, even in his organs and apparatuses. We should consider, then, that the psychological images of man, found in his artistic, religious, cultural and mythological production, can be superimposed beyond ethnic and linguistic differences, owing to a collective unconscious model (35); therefore, we must observe that these images and topics are supported by phylogenesis, intended as a common psychological feature, and represented by the human body.
For instance, many researchers have remarked that the sea, the cradle of life, has the same composition as human blood plasma (36) and this latter considered in its liquid part is linked to the concept of emotion (emo-agere = to work on blood). We can therefore affirm that, at a psychosomatic level, any emotional fact refers to precise bio-chemical and humoral elements of ematic life. On the other hand, psychoanalysis has observed that in the onirical productions due to worst identity and unsolved emotion crises, often appear dream images of the sea and waters, and that their more or less transparent iconography is a source of anguish for the dreamer. Beyond these remarks, what can the link be between oneiric sea image, blood plasma, and real sea? Why, if we want to express a substantial emotional change of our psychic life, should we refer to an oneiric image, obtained from an external reality, such as the sea, according to our need for a change and a symbolic rebirth? Our consciousness does not know that the sea is the cradle of life, unless one has been given this kind of culture, and that the living species have started exploring the earth from the sea; but our body remembers very well the phylogenetic feelings connected to this ancestral transformation, and therefore the unconscious chooses symbolic forms to show our consciousness its need of a psychological change; it uses a plastic image as its language, picking it up from the ancestral memories buried in our body. Therefore a common knowledge must exist, able to link all the natural events of the world, the human body, and the human psyche, utilising the same images, working analogies, and identical reflections.(37)
This sort of sapientia naturalis is known by analytical psychology scholars as the archetypal function, able to contemporarily operate, both materially and psychologically. Approaching the working mode of archetypes, as indicated by the modern eco-biopsychological attitude, implies for the psyche the possibility to fluctuate between the principles of analogy and causality, conscious and unconscious, symbol and sign. In this perspective, Eco-Biopsychology could become the modern scientific paradigm to regain the real centrality and totality of human consciousness, thanks to an attitude no more extraneous to the knowledge of the rules of nature and to the comprehension of its functions. If in past times man had to protect himself from natural forces, today it is nature that has to be preserved from man: the way to realise such a program is once more to give life to a philosophy of nature and man, starting from the qualitative values of forms, colours, infinite elements, by which nature shows itself. Thanks to the analogy and the symbol, these elements should be inserted in the human body, where phylogenesis has synthesised its own primordial imprintings, sedimenting them in physiological structures and apparatuses, to find them again in those mental images, (belonging to the same archetypal background) defined by alchemists as fundamental prima materia for the "Great Opera".

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