Chaos and Psychology

Chaos and psychology

In a wonderful book “Putting a New Spin on Groups: The Science of Chaos” by Bud A. McClure, there is an insightful discussion on the application of chaos theory to Jungian Psychology.

Sigmund Freud

“Several articles appeared identifying parallels between aspects of chaos theory and Jungian Psychology, none better than Butz, who integrated ideas from chaos theory with the psychodynamic developmental theories of Freud, Erickson, and Jung to clarify and extend Jung's concept of the self. Butz deﬁned chaos, in human experience, as overwhelming anxiety. This anxiety, which acts as a preconscious gestation period, foreshadows potential psychic growth. Like the periods artists bear before the leap of creative insight occurs, these cycles of intense distress are necessary for psychological growth.

Erik Erickson

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Butz utilized Erickson’s developmental model to make his point that turbulence and anxiety are necessary conditions of, in this case, psychosocial evolvement. In Erickson's model, each of the seven stages of development is seen as a crisis point: basic trust versus mistrust, autonomy versus shame and doubt, initiative versus guilt, industry versus inferiority, identity versus role confusion, intimacy versus isolation, and generativity versus stagnation.At each stage or crisis point, the individual seeks resolution of the basic dialectic between individual and cultural needs. The conﬂict, turbulence, and resolution are the reorganizing ingredients that propel the individual toward ego integrity. As Butz pointed out, although Erickson's model is linear, through the lens of chaos theory, its power increases.

Carl Jung

Jung’s relationship between self and ego

Jung's theory of development centered on the middle and later stages of life. He ceded much of the early stage theory to Freud.For Jung, the ultimate developmental achievement was the attainment of self. Self, he felt, could be realized by moving beyond the false egoic center that is created by the mind.

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In Jung's theory, the self stands as the true center point between the unconscious and conscious mind. As the center of the personality, the self is ﬁrmly grounded and is a point around which all character constellations revolve. Somewhat analogous to Erickson's psychosocial model,Jung characterized the quest for self as a process of separation from collective or societal norms.

Chaos theory

However, as Butz pointed out, this midpoint state implies a kind of equilibrium that suggests a closed system and, according to the second law of thermodynamics, eventual entropy. However, Butz argued that Jung offered conflicting evidence on this point.He introduced Jung's notion of enantiodromia as a countering force that develops in individuals to compensate for one-sided tendencies. To Butz, this suggested that the psychic is never really able to isolate itself and thus, is subject to the same laws of open systems that apply in chaos theory. So, utilizing this evidence, Butz redefined the self as transitory, rather than static, thus, enabling it to be modeled by chaos theory.

Butz explained that individuals are able, during stable periods in their lives, to achieve a ﬁxed, yet transitory, sense of self. However, these periods remain stable only until the psyche encounters novel material that it is unable to integrate within its current mental conﬁguration. When the mental apparatus is disrupted, chaos ensues, followed by a period where the organism reorganizes at a higher level of complexity. This process seems compatible with that inferred in Freeman's brain research.As the organism develops higher and higher levels of complexity and adaptation, it alternates between periods of stability and chaos. However, as Butz noted, the chaotic periods are far less frequent than are

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the stable ones.

Butz, like Freedman,realized one of the fundamental tenets of chaos theory – the self-organizing capacity of living systems. Their work corroborates the earlier research of Prigogine and Stengers in chemistry, Elderidge and Gould in evolutionary theory, and Maturana and Varela in biology, who have conﬁrmed that living systems appear to be able to generate their own new forms “from inner guidelines rather than the imposition of form from outside.”

According to Butz, psychic chaos and subsequent self-organization signal a creative gestation period wherein the psyche reorganizes itself to accommodate or integrate novel material. Both Butz and Jung discussed the link between chaos and creativity, recognizing what so many others have, that psychic turbulence is a necessary condition prior to new insight or creation of a new psychic structure. As an artist might struggle with containing chaos in order to create, so, too, must an individual in the throes of psychic upheaval manage chaos while undergoing a transformation. During chaotic periods, the unconscious issues form symbolic images or mandalas. These mandalas, containing symbols of the self, are expressed in a mathematical structure. They appear to be compensatory.Mandalas both express and create order in opposition to ongoing psyche chaos. Butz concluded that:

These symbolic representations of the transitory self may also act as a container to focus chaotic experience toward an organized state. As a consequence, the mandala or the symbol seem to function as an attractor that brings about order.

What is fascinating about these mandalas are the incredible similarities they have to the fractal images so prevalent in the geometry of chaos.

In counseling, the therapist's task is to create order, or, as Winnicott so aptly entitled, a holding environment that contains the client's overwhelming anxiety. The container soothes the client's anxiety, but does not interrupt or dissipate it, or interfere with the natural psychic reorganization. Furthermore, the therapist does not attempt to order the disorder, but instead validates it as a necessary precondition for change. Therefore, containment, as used here, legitimates chaos and does not control or restrain it. In order to create, artists learn to appreciate the necessity of chaos as a prelude to new insight. As a result, “Creative people tend to be more tolerant of ambiguity in perception than less creative people … and prefer chaotic and irregular shapes” to more symmetrical ones.”