Abstract:
It is certain that our life cannot exist outside the mentality and the imaginary, they being
the ones that allow the perception and understanding of human representations, of the way of the
individual is relating to the reality in which he exists. The process of establishing, transforming
and consolidating mentalities is one of the prominent topics at the heart of public debates in all
countries of the world, but especially in transition countries, where the way citizens receive,
process or filter information and relate immediately to realities, it is identified as one of the main
obstacles that prevent or one of the factors that favor the production of a substantial social change.
In this sense, this article presents a reflection on the need for progressive multidisciplinary
research on the problem of collective mentality, from the perspective of collective imaginary and
social representations, evoking, first of all, the essence of resources of meaning and functionality
of the concept of mentality and of the related concepts (social imaginary, social representations,
collective consciousness), from antiquity to the Renaissance.