The "Uomini e Idee" review (already published from 1958 as a periodical of psychology and literature) has been issued since September 1997 with a new series of philosophy, neurosciences, humanistic socio-psychology, phenomenology and experiences of the modified states and inner states of consciousness.

It is published by the Napolitan house Alfredo Guida and is directed by Corrado Piancastelli.

The periodical originates within a movement referring to two cultural institutions, both of them located in Naples: the self-named association "Uomini e Idee" (created in 1997 as a support to the review) and the Fondazione ISUP - Institute for Humanistic Socio-psychology and Psychotherapy (legally recognised since 1980).

The promoter and founder of the entire movement is the Napolitan writer and essayist Corrado Piancastelli, author of numerous publications, researcher in the field of consciousness, creativity and the modified states, in which he is considered an authority. Piancastelli, president of both cultural institutions and director of "Uomini e Idee", has long been concerned with drug addiction and juvenile maladjustment, and with borderline-type unconscious phenomena, including shamanism. Around the Napolitan scholar there has existed, for decades, a large association and the "Uomini e Idee" review represents, at the moment, an opportunity of great importance both for the studies on consciousness and for the entire proposal of a scientific metaphysics on which Piancastelli's teaching is based.

The cultural line of "Uomini e Idee" is therefore explicitly both non-religious and metaphysical and provides for the creation of a dialectical workship in which it is possible to meet for discussing the paradigm of the Soul and that of the science-humanism/matter-Being dualism, from which also a consistent ethical and sociological behavior may derive starting from the initial proposition. These are premises which represent - in this initial phase of the review re-launching - a moment of cultural clarity and choice of standing - naturally dialectic and problematic - in order that no misunderstandings should arise: it is about sustaining an audacious working hypothesis representing the heart of both humanism and metaphysics, but also of a theoretic line granting "Uomini e Idee" a well-defined location and context.

Besides, the paradigm on which the review is projected is firmly based. Some indications of the neurosciences and physics, the contribution of phenomenology, as well as the theories of humanistic psychology and the research on the modified states of consciousness allow for a meeting on a confluent and original ground and for the possibility of basing operational hypotheses on the autonomy of consciousness and rear-consciousness (concepts of Soul, of Self, of Spirit, of the end and meaning of life, of non-religious meditation, of "epochè", of Other than self, etc.) and of a socio-psychology consistent with the theoretical assumptions.

The cultural provocation, to which the editorial staff assigns the entire intellectual workshop of the Review, consists therefore in the assumption that metaphysical reality - though conceived, as it has already been said, strictly as non-religious - may be supposed and researched also scientifically: the theorisation thus constructed would reconcile philosophical subjectivity with the requirements of sciences, today being possible to objectify the existence (obviously not its contents) of an inner world as never before.

It is a formulation which, originating in the work groups formed around Corrado Piancastelli, brackets the very concept of modified states of consciousness with a series of phenomena on the genesis of which there is no scientific agreement, such as intuition, creativity, symbolisation, the impulsions of freedom, the acts of vision and inner experience from which philosophical thought originates, pre-death phenomena, the emergence of the in-self in the states of deep meditation, the great trances, the ecstasies, the shamanism and some aspects of linguistic itself. All these are signals included in the proposed model of Soul as an unconscious structure parallel both to the mind and to the brain itself. A ground, as it can be seen, of great extension which, if rearranged on an interdisciplinary level, completely renews the research field of these studies.

The hypothesis of the soul-mind model on which the work of both the Fondazione ISUP and "Uomini e Idee" is based, is that if a Soul exists it necessarily has to leave a trace of itself in the body (neural network) and in the inner dimension of the self-consciousness. There occurs thus a meeting between a non-religiously and scientifically conceived metaphysics, neurosciences, humanistic psychology, sociology and even poetry in a review-workshop, possibly also informal, continually and necessarily requiring original and creative ideas.