Psychic Perturbations
Leading to Chaos
Our worldview is generally defined as our overall perspective from which
we see and interpret the world around us. Our belief system is generally defined
as a collection of beliefs about life and the universe that we hold (it comes
from the German Weltanschauung). These two parameters can be considered identical
and are based on our experiences. Singer (1972) says
The
important fact about a situation or thing, from a psychological standpoint, is
not so much how it objectively is, as
it is how we see it. That which is
unbearable may become acceptable if we can give up certain prejudices and change
our point of view. This philosophy of life--a Weltanschauung,
as Jung called it--is developed step by step through every increase in
experience and knowledge. As a person’s image of the world changes, so a
person changes. (p. 7)
According
to Neumann (1995) “it is characteristic of every individual, under all
circumstances, to create for himself a consciously constellated and
synthetically constructed view of the world, however great or small in scope”
(pp. 357-358).
Using the phase space map in Figure 15, we can say that the areas of C
and UP at any time from birth (t=0) to t is equal to the ego’s
overall experience X or
This equation is in keeping with Jung’s (1981) comment that “all
immediate experience is psychic” (p. 354).
Figure 31 shows the primary unidirectional information flows throughout the psyche. One
of the major constructs of the ego complex is the worldview (extravert) or
belief system (introvert) which we can denote as W where
N %W%X
which
says that our worldview is proportional to both our external experiences and to
our internal self-image.
We can predict the worldview W for the ego at any time t+1 by
where
the Greek letter lamda 8
is a measure of the ability of the ego to assimilate an experience. We denote it
here as the ego’s assimilation factor (Jung’s “subjective factor”) where
0 # 8
# 1 and Xt is any
new experience at time t. The ego must assimilate both external and internal
experiences and the assimilation factor represents “a general law which
decides between psychic health and psychopathology” (Whitmont, 1991, p. 51).
This law states that all experiences must be assimilated by the ego in order to
maintain psychic health. The factor Xt/8
is the system perturbation at any time t. For each time increment, the
perturbation is fed back into the worldview.
We can expand the basic equation above because psychic intensity :
of any external experience is equivalent to the ratio of that experience to the
current worldview or
:t
= Xt/Wt
so
that
Xt = :t
Wt
for
0 $:
$1. This equation for : says that for any ego, the
ratio of its external experience to its internal worldview is a measure of
intensity : (Jung’s “value tone”)
at any time t. In other words, the intensity of any experience is usually
measured by a comparison to the current worldview. Substituting we get the
worldview equation
where
the ratio of value tone to subjective factor is
)W
= :/8,
a measure of the rate by which a worldview can be changed by a new experience,
where 0 # )W
#4.
This ratio contrasts the intensity of an experience with the ability of the ego
to assimilate that experience into its existing worldview as shown in Figure 32.
An ego with a strong W can assimilate a more intense experience than with a weak
W. Within certain safe amounts, )W
adds to the worldview and expands it. When :
÷ 0 and 8 ÷
1 we find that Wt+1Wt (the worldview
at time t+1 is almost equal to the worldview at time t) and little or no change
takes place.
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When )W is large, Wt+1 becomes a transition
phenomenon that leads the ego to instability. If )W
is too large for assimilation, for example a numinous experience for which the
worldview is unprepared, the result will be an instability that can lead the ego
to chaos. Then we have :
÷ 1 and 8 ÷
0 which gives WT+1 ÷
4.
Thus )W can be considered as a
Lyapounov function for worldview W.
In some situations, )W increases for a time and
then decreases. In the language of chaos theory, we can say that Wt+1
becomes asymtotically stable after the experience is finally assimilated.
