Laminar Flow vs Turbulence

            The disorderly behavior of a simple system can act as a creative process. It can generate complexity. In this way complex systems can emerge from simple systems and forces of evolution can emerge directly from chaos. Suggestions of structure can be found in the midst of apparently random behavior. For an example, consider water flowing through a pipe. At low speeds, there is a nice smooth condition, which scientists call laminar flow.

            If we speed up the flow of the water, a critical point will be reached where the smooth conditions of the water will be given over to a chaotic one. At this point, laminar flow will transition into turbulence (in chaos theory, turbulence is a strange attractor which draws the orderly flowing water into chaos as velocity increases).

            Turbulence is often considered to be a purely random disorder or noise;  however, such is the case only on the macroscopic level. At the microscopic level, turbulence appears highly organized. The behavior of the individual water molecules is quite coherent. For this reason, we can say that the transition from laminar flow to turbulence is an initiation of self-organization--it is the creation of order from chaos. It is a good example of how molecular order can be obtained from what we outwardly observe to be disorder (Prigogine & Stengers, 1984, p. 140).

            In the same way that smoothly flowing water can become turbulent, so our lives can suddenly turn from orderly to chaotic. The ego’s stability, like that of all complex dynamic systems, is relative. The psychological process of repression, for example, can allow unwanted thoughts and emotions to slowly build up in our personal unconscious until the demarcation line between conscious and unconscious (see Figure 5) can no longer hold it in. We repress something by forcing it from our conscious ego to the unconscious; however, repressed contents never die. Rather they fester and can interfere with our normal growth and development. 

            According to Jung (1964), “a repression has neurotic consequences, because the repressed affect still exists and simply makes an outlet for itself elsewhere, in some unsuitable place” (p. 340). The personal unconscious contains subliminal perceptions as well as psychic contents that were once conscious but which have been put aside by either repression or forgetting (Jacobi, 1973). Thus, the ego can cast aside things that it no longer wants to be conscious of, by storing unwanted memories in the personal unconscious. But this storage of repressed psychic contents acts as a strange attractor, and can grow in strength until it can no longer be ignored.