Course Description

This seminar offers an in-depth exploration of the harmonic levels of mental representation as described in Matthew Bennett’s Integrated Analytical Model. Participants will examine the developmental continuum that spans from archetypal probability fields to the fully realized self, engaging with key psychoanalytic and Jungian perspectives alongside complexity theory and contemporary neuroscience. Special attention will be given to the concepts of harmonic vectors, affect as a motivator of psychological development, and the interplay of defenses and discontinuities within this holarchic system. Through lecture, discussion, and clinical illustration, attendees will gain tools for understanding how these nested harmonics shape personality, attachment, and therapeutic transformation.

Learning Objectives

Describe the harmonic levels of mental representation within Matthew Bennett’s Integrated Analytical Model—archetype, symbol, object, complex, schema, and self—and explain how psychological development unfolds through these nested levels toward integrated self-experience.
Differentiate the six harmonics as distinct but interrelated modes of mental organization, enabling clinicians to locate clinical material (e.g., affect, imagery, narrative, relational pattern) at the appropriate harmonic level for formulation and intervention.
Analyze affect as a primary motivator and organizer of psychological development, and formulate how affective intensity drives movement, fixation, or regression across specific harmonic levels in personality structure and attachment patterns.
Apply a harmonic formulation to clinical material in order to conceptualize defenses, discontinuities, and therapeutic change as level-specific processes, supporting more precise pacing, interpretive depth, and treatment focus in advanced clinical work.

The Aion Institute is approved by the California Psychological Association to provide continuing professional education for psychologists. The Aion Institute (AIO279) maintains responsibility for this program and its content.

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AION 304 Harmonic Progression II: Archetype, Affect, and the Architecture of Mental Representation