Objective Mental Reality- The 'Dark Matter' of the Social Sciences: Volume 1: The Physical and Social Spheres

The book offers a philosophical and cognitive justification for the author's concept of Objective Mental Reality (OMR), which links individual consciousness with society's intersubjective understanding of the world.

The first part of the book explains why the concept of OMR is essential to modern science. Objects and phenomena do not exist for humans in isolation: they are formed in consciousness as mental representations and only in OMR do they acquire the status of real entities. This makes reality understandable, structured, and actionable.

The second part is devoted to the physical realm of OMR. Any object appears not only as an object of perception but also as a bearer of cultural meanings. Even the scientific picture of the world turns out to be part of OMR, since its laws and facts are also mental constructions.

The third part addresses the social sphere. Institutions, roles, norms, values, and events exist only insofar as people believe in them and confirm them through their behavior.

OMR is revealed as a "second layer" of reality, where entities are formed that organize experience and guide our behavior. The book offers a groundbreaking explanation of how consciousness and society create the world we live in, revealing the key role of the OMR in the interaction of psyche, matter, and society.

Sergey Ernestovich Polyakov (born 1956) is a psychiatrist and psychologist with more than forty years of clinical and research experience. After graduating with honors from the Pirogov Russian National Research Medical University in 1979, he combined clinical practice with scientific research. In 1986, he defended his Candidate of Sciences (PhD-equivalent) dissertation in psychiatry and subsequently served as senior and later principal research fellow at the Moscow Research Institute of Psychiatry. In 1991, he founded and directed one of the first in Russia private multidisciplinary medical clinic in Moscow.

Since the early 2000s, Polyakov has focused on developing a comprehensive original theory of phenomenological psychology. This theory represents a coherent scientific system that explains the nature of mental phenomena. One of its key components is the concept of Objective Mental Reality—an intersubjective layer of the psyche shaped by society, which defines the human worldview, thinking, and patterns of behavior.

At the heart of his approach lies the conviction that the psyche does not merely reflect the world but actively constitutes it in the form of stable entities and constructions. This perspective has made it possible to integrate disparate experimental data, empirical findings, and observations into a unified system, with a particular emphasis on verbal and mixed representations that ensure shared understanding and collective knowledge.

He is the author of several monographs, including Myths and Reality of Modern Psychology (2004), Phenomenology of Mental Representations (2011), Concepts and Other Constructions of Consciousness (2017), The “Dark Matter” of the Social Sciences (2024), Phenomenology of Sensory Representations (2024), and Phenomenology of Symbolic Representations (2025). Together, these works establish the foundations of a new phenomenological psychology and highlight its significance for the social sciences and the humanities.