Abstract

Established religions integrate a society's everyday secular realities with humankind's numinous experience of the holy. Powerful emotions nourish the cultural expression of the archetypes propelling the “ritual dances” of art, sport, and technocracy. During sacred moments such as mother‐infant or adult bonding, neuroendocrine triggers activate lifelong ties. The cultural canon of the left cortex contrasts with the intuitive right. Brainstem “switches” alternate the left's cool, extraverted, sympathetic drive for control with the right's “warm” attachment behavior and dreaming sleep. Psychic trauma damages flexibility with resultant alexithymic blindness to emotions and archetypes. Substance abuse and narcissistic overemphasis on control ensue.