From Volume 23, #4, Dec. 1997

Archetypes and Strange Attractors:

The Chaotic World of Symbols

John R. Van Eenwyk

Inner City Books, Toronto, 1997

I suspect that many old and new acquaintances of C. G. Jung will find this book a wise and erudite yet – largely – accessible review or introduction, as the case may be, to basic elements of Jung’s thought, restated in today’s language. Or perhaps tomorrow’s. It contains solid common sense on a wide range of issues. It makes a good case for chaos.

Van Eenwyk draws on recent developments in the physical sciences and mathematics to remind us how Jung’s thought emphasizes the ultimate unity of physical, psychological and moral phenomena. Both those who accuse Jungian psychology of being sloppy and unscientific and those Jungians who are suspicious of science may find this book a helpful corrective.

Archetypes and Strange Attractors is not a naive apologetic suggesting that recent developments in the hard sciences “prove” the truth of Jung’s theories. However, the more nuanced assertions Van Eenwyk does make are bold enough. The preface says:

... Jung believed that in the dynamics of the psyche chaos is inevitable. Consequently he focused a great deal of attention on developing the means to find patterns in that chaos. That which has come to be known as “chaos theory” now suggests that his theories could be verified quantitatively were we to have the ability to keep track of all the variants. Analytical psychology and physical and mathematical science all employ virtually identical metaphors to understand particular phenomena, but this does not guarantee that they are accurate metaphors or that they describe the same phenomena. The evidence is growing, however, that chaos theory and analytical psychology are describing similar dynamics, albeit in very different realms.

Perhaps the most important implication of the correspondence between Jung’s theories and chaos research is that fantasies about order, that spurious product of reductionism, being the most desirable state-of-being, are slowly giving way to the realization that chaos is far healthier than previously imagined.

Although Van Eenwyk deals with abstruse subjects in this book, it also reflects a humanity consistent with his career. A graduate of the C. G. Jung Institute in Zurich, with a private practice in Olympia, Washington, Van Eenwyk is also a clinical supervisor at a university medical school. He has lectured internationally on the subject of this book and on the treatment of torture survivors.

For Van Eenwyk, the psyche is part of the natural order and obeys its laws. As he reads Jung, the archetypes, “essentially the interface between psyche and substance” underlie the emergence and development of consciousness. Until recently, in his view, there were few good metaphors to describe how the unconscious is related to the rest of the psyche.

Yet, during the last decade, we have discovered powerful images that seem to display many of the characteristics that Jung ascribed to psychodynamics. Surprisingly these images have come from the hard sciences: physics, biology, meteorology and mathematics.

In Jung’s time, Van Eenwyk notes, many thought him and his followers mystics and kooks, and they

pretty much gave up the hope of ever convincing the world of mainstream science that their theories were tenable. Now, however, things are changing. With the development of the computer, which has initiated more than a few shifts in the metaphors of science, chaos theory is establishing itself as legitimate. Surprisingly, the patterns that are beginning to emerge from studies of chaotic dynamics bear an intriguing resemblance to those Jung described. Produced by complex dynamics, they are difficult to describe. They look a lot like symbols.

Off we go on a tour of such concepts as iteration, sensitive dependence on initial conditions, bifurcations, mutual inhibition equations, strange attractors, fractals, homoclinic and saddle points and so on. I found this fascinating, but, in Van Eenwyk’s words, “a bit chewy.” I hope it’s not going to be on the exam.

After this heady stuff, this astonishingly rich book then goes on to touch on symbols in the works of the religious thinkers Paul Tillich, Martin Heidegger, Thomas Merton, and Paul Ricoeur, before returning to Jung’s thought – by way of tales from Iroquois, Greek and other folklore.

Van Eenwyk develops an argument that moves from chaos as a mathematical concept to psychological and social chaos, and makes a case for the psychologist’s working with chaos rather than seeking to impose order. He asks:

Is it possible that in the realm of interpersonal relationships to treat chaos with order is to precipitate entropy? Or does treating chaos with chaos create the opening for an eventual emergence of order? ... Is chaos simply unrecognizable order? And finally, is the chaos that occurs in relationship an opportunity for greater symmetry?

Along with his insights into the role of chaos in mathematics, psychology and spiritual matters, Van Eenwyk also has insights to share about its social role. What happens after chaos takes over, he writes,

depends less on the conditions that led to it than on the response of those it involves. Unless those swept up in its power are able to resonate with it, their future is dark indeed ... Once they begin to participate in the chaos, however, they become a critical part in its evolution.

Both chaos theory and psychology are sciences, Eenwyk writes. All too often, both are urged to forego completeness in favour of simplistic definitions. But chaos offers more flexibility and more choice than order, and is essential for growth, Van Eenwyk argues.

Our legacy from C. G. Jung emphasizes the quest for what is sometimes called wholeness, a rich and messy objective by comparison with the perfection that is often held up as the goal by our Judeo-Christian tradition. Jung himself, unlike some of his followers, was deeply fascinated by number and by the latest advances in the physical sciences. Archetypes and Strange Attractors is a worthy and exciting addition to his tradition.

–Harvey Shepherd