The Atlas
Every theory of consciousness, and every school of psychotherapy, takes a position on the same axis: does matter produce mind, or does mind precede matter? The Atlas plots both on that shared ground: the theory shelf above, the care map below. Placements are editorial judgments, argued in the notes under each map.
Before reading
What is consciousness? Does brain produce mind, or does mind come first? This is the materialism-to-idealism spectrum, and most schools inherit a position silently rather than argue one.
Is first-person experience admissible data? Behaviorism said no; phenomenology said it is the only data. The century of psychology's history is mostly this fight.
For a theory: does consciousness do anything? For a therapy: must change pass through conscious experience, or can it work around it? The two maps use these sibling questions as their vertical axes.
Vocabulary
Philosophy of mind offers a short menu. Reading it once makes both maps legible. Arranged from matter-first to mind-first:
On the last two mind-first rows. In the academy they are rivals: Chalmers's taxonomy files Kastrup under cosmic idealism (one subject, with a decombination story: dissociation) and Hoffman's conscious realism nearer micro-idealism (many subjects, with a combination story), and the principals press real objections at each other. The school reads them instead as two focal lengths on one reality: cosmic idealism focuses on the ultimate oneness; conscious realism focuses on the many layers of separation from oneness that consciousness can explore. Whether the principals would accept the reconciliation is theirs to say.
Map one · the theory shelf
In 2024 Robert Lawrence Kuhn catalogued roughly two hundred theories of consciousness in "A Landscape of Consciousness" (Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology). Mapped here: twenty-three representatives of his families, on the shared horizontal axis, and a vertical one fit for theories: how much causal power the theory grants consciousness, from idle to first cause. Hover or focus any point for its claim.
The bottom-right quadrant stays empty: a mind-first theory with an idle consciousness refutes itself, and the care map below inherits the same empty quadrant. Chalmers's naturalistic dualism hovers near the edge because causal closure keeps squeezing its phenomenal properties toward idleness. Mysterianism sits hollow near the middle, refusing both axes. Dashed rings mark active experimental programs. Representatives only: Kuhn's full landscape runs to roughly two hundred entries.
Shelf rule of thumb: only theories above the causal midline can underwrite consciousness-first practice. Below it, consciousness has nothing to work with; above it, Applied Idealism has ground to stand on. Full landscape: Kuhn, R. L. (2024), "A landscape of consciousness: Toward a taxonomy of explanations and implications," Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology.
Map two · the care map
Same horizontal axis; the vertical becomes the question fit for cures: how much of the change is claimed to run through conscious experience (insight, meaning, awareness) rather than around it (conditioning, chemistry). Every school carries an implicit philosophy of consciousness; this map makes the implicit visible. Hover or focus any point for its lineage.
A reading aid, not a measurement. The bottom-right stays empty for a reason: a school that held consciousness to be primary while healing around it would contradict itself. The range bar shows psychedelic therapy's contested ontology: the same trial data reads as "relaxed priors" or as "loosened filter," and both readings remain live. The enactivists (Varela, Thompson, Rosch) reject the horizontal axis itself: on their view mind is enacted between organism and world, and the inside/outside framing is the mistake. Every map has a frame; this is where ours shows.
Brain produces mind; therapy engineers the producer, or its software.
The ontology question is suspended, refused, or answered only about stories; the work runs through experience anyway.
Consciousness is treated as prior, larger than the person, or not brain-bound; care follows from that.
A sharper distinction
Most schools use the two words interchangeably, a habit that began with Descartes, who defined mind as the thing aware of itself. Nearly every interesting development since has been a different way of breaking that equation.
Descartes' identification: the mental is transparent to itself. Nobody holds this anymore, but it is the default hiding inside everyday speech.
Freud's revolution: mind is mostly unconscious, and consciousness is a narrow "sense organ." Jung agrees on the geometry; cognitive science kept the cut and dropped the drama. Care, on this cut, means expanding the lit area: insight.
The contemplative cut, and Applied Idealism's. Mind (thoughts, images, feelings, the modeling instrument) appears within a witness that is not itself mental: Patanjali's seer versus the mind's fluctuations, Dzogchen's rigpa versus sems. ACT's observing self and MBCT's decentering are this cut working incognito. Care, here, means dis-identification: resting as what watches.
Analytic philosophy separates intentionality (states about things: Brentano) from phenomenality (something it is like: Nagel, Chalmers); Block splits access from phenomenal consciousness. The two can come apart: blindsight processes what it does not experience.
A vocabulary rule the discipline enforces in its own texts: mind for the contents and the instrument, consciousness for that which experiences them. Never interchangeably.
Method
Placements are editorial syntheses of canonical texts and standard histories (Ellenberger's The Discovery of the Unconscious; Robertson's The Philosophy of CBT; Wampold and Imel's The Great Psychotherapy Debate; Kuhn's 2024 landscape; primary sources named in the notes). The x-axis reads implied ontology from load-bearing assumptions, not from practitioners' private beliefs, which vary. Treat every coordinate as an argument, not a datum: the note is the argument. Two honest limits: the enactivists refuse the horizontal axis, and mysterianism refuses both; they are drawn accordingly.
The Atlas derives from the working papers of CoCreating.School and is maintained by the discipline's stewards. Corrections and challenges are welcome: hello@cocreating.school.