Reuniting Corps and Psychisme: Toward an Integrative Model of Human Experience

Abstract

Historically, the human experience has been conceptualized through a dualistic lens separating mind from body. However, contemporary research across neuroscience, psychology, anthropology, and philosophy increasingly points to an integrated model where bodily processes and psychological life are deeply entangled. This review synthesizes interdisciplinary scholarship to formulate an integrative model of human experience that reunites corps (body) and psychisme (the embodied psyche). Drawing from embodied cognition, neurophenomenology, interoceptive neuroscience, and biopsychosocial frameworks, we argue that human experience arises from dynamic interactions between bodily states, neural processes, and subjective meaning-making. We examine evidence that the body not only supports but shapes cognition, emotion, and selfhood, and explore how disruptions of embodiment relate to psychopathology. The review highlights models such as Damasio’s somatic marker theory and contemporary interoceptive frameworks that center bodily signals in emotional experience, as well as cultural and evolutionary perspectives on embodied emotion. We also discuss clinical implications for mind-body therapies and propose future directions for integrative research. This work contributes to the emerging consensus that human experience is fundamentally embodied, and to fully understand psychisme we must collapse long-standing dualisms and embrace an integrative framework.