Phase Locking

            The process of phase locking occurs whenever the chaotic actions of the individual shifts to the ordered actions of a collective system--when individual behavior shifts to a collective behavior (Briggs and Peat, 1989).  According to Garfinkel (1987),

The word entrainment is used to refer to any situation in which small interactions among the individuals of a system have the effect of confining the total state of the system to some limited region of the global state space.  In this most general sense, it is simply motion that is not ergotic - that does not wander all over the state space.  (p. 200).

            Phase entrainment is sometimes called phase locking or synchronization. Garfinkel (1987)  lists the following examples of phase entrainment:

(1)                   Populations of crickets entrain each other to chirp coherently.

(2)                   Populations of fireflies flash together.

(3)                   Yeast cells display coherence in glycolytic oscillation.

(4)                   Insects show coherence in their cycles of eclosion (emergence from the pupal to adult form).

(5)                   Populations of women living together may show phase-entrainment of their ovulation cycles.

(6)                   Populations of secretory cells, such as in the pituitary, pancreas, and other organs, release their hormones in coherent pulses. 

            Garfinkel (1987) also discusses the importance of global attractors:

In a model of cooperation as entrainment, global attractors model overall equilibria...The global attractor model of the emergence of cooperation displays the characteristic features of the self-organization paradigm. (p. 206)

            Thus for two self-organizing or dissipative systems in symbiotic relationship, the cooperation between them establishes a global attractor which draws them toward their common goal. This is exactly the relationship that exists between the ego and the Self where the global attractor is the archetypal Self and the attraction is Jung’s individuation process. As we will see later, each ego has but a single trajectory through phase space.  But if we look at all possible ego trajectories (lives) every possible point in phase space is reached.