Meaning as Primordial Order — A Post-Jungian Vision of Entropy and Archetype
- Brainz Magazine
- Jul 14
- 7 min read
Dr. Dragana Favre is a psychiatrist, psychotherapist, and a seeker of the human psyche's mysteries. With a medical degree and extensive neuroscience education from prestigious institutions like the Max Planck Institute and Instituto de Neurociencias, she's a seasoned expert.
What if meaning is not merely a human construction laid over a meaningless world, but something that precedes the world itself? In modern science and the dominant image of the universe, everything begins with entropy: the second law of thermodynamics becomes a paradigm for understanding how energy and form inevitably dissolve into dispersion. Life, consciousness, psyche, all are seen as transient “islands” of low entropy, local reductions of disorder, small sparks of coherence that do not really alter the cosmic destiny of decay. But what if it’s the other way around? What if there was first a need to constrain dispersion, to preserve a minimum of structure, to continually regenerate form from chaos, and what if, at the core of this tension, lies what Jung called the archetype?
In his mature writings, Jung increasingly understood the archetype as a psychoid factor, something that is not just an image in human consciousness but a formative pattern that precedes and conditions consciousness itself. In Mysterium Coniunctionis (1955/1970), he writes that archetypes are “numinous structures,” not fully graspable by introspection alone but recognizable through their effects: they shape the psyche, yet they also manifest as patterns in matter, in myths, in dreams, even in seemingly random events which Jung and Pauli famously called synchronicity (Jung, 1960). This was a radical point of contact between analytical psychology and quantum physics. In his correspondence with physicist Wolfgang Pauli, Jung first clearly hinted that archetypes might function as a fundamental matrix of order, something that binds mind and matter through “uncaused order” (Atom and Archetype, Meier, 2001). Pauli was fascinated by the idea that behind quantum chaos, there could be a hidden order, although he could not mathematically formalize it.
Here is where a post-Jungian interpretation can take a leap: if the archetype has a psychoid status, crossing the boundary between the psychic and the physical, then we can imagine that psyche itself is a kind of cosmic regulator of entropy. Not in the trivial sense that “mind creates the world,” but more subtly: psyche is a process that generates differentiation, and differentiation makes form possible. Entropy, by its very nature, tends to dissolve any form, leading to the “heat death” of the universe (Prigogine & Stengers, 1984). But Ilya Prigogine, the Nobel Prize–winning physicist who studied open systems far from equilibrium, showed that there exist so-called dissipative structures, islands of low entropy that continually self-organize through energy flow. Cells, ecosystems, and climatic cycles are all examples of local “resistance” to entropy.
If we layer Jung’s idea of the archetype on top of this, we might say: archetypes are psychoid “low-entropy clusters.” They are not purely material, yet they are not merely mental projections. They are the patterns that matter, “catches” when they form shapes. Crystal formation, biological symmetry, and fractal structures in nature can all be seen as symbolic analogies of archetypal order. In neuroscience, a similar thread emerges: modern research into neural entropy shows that certain brain states are associated with high informational uncertainty (permutation entropy), while during deep meditation or symbolic processing (such as in dreams), characteristic coherence appears in the alpha and theta bands (Canolty et al., 2006; Schartner et al., 2017). In other words, the psyche at the neural level constantly oscillates between chaos and order; the symbolic work of the psyche is simultaneously an organization and a containment of entropy.
From this, we can draw a crucial post-Jungian insight: psyche does not seek to abolish entropy. It uses it as raw material. Complexes, myths, and dreams are all forms in which the psyche creates islands of meaning. Traumatic complexes, for example, may appear pathologically rigid, but viewed through this entropic lens, they are attempts to minimize the dissipation of psychic energy. A complex is like a stunted dissipative cluster: it preserves a minimum coherence but stifles vitality and transformation (Fordham, 1957). Healthy symbolic work, by contrast, enables more flexible differentiation. The symbol does not solidify into dogma but remains alive. This is why, for Jung, the Self as the central archetype of order, the one that holds opposites together, is also the supreme structure that makes coherence possible amid chaos (Jung, 1968).
This idea grows even richer when we link it to mythological and cultural layers. In Slavic mythology, for example, figures like the Rozhanitsy represent symbolic clusters that hold the rhythms of life in cyclical coherence: the rhythm of birth, the menstrual cycle, fertility, and death (Toporov, 1989). Nav, the realm of the dead, symbolizes the dissolution of forms into primal chaos, while ancestral rites and offerings to the Rozhanitsy serve to ritually contain that chaos and transform it into meaningful order. This is a primordial dramatization of the psychoid struggle between entropy and differentiation.
Interestingly, similar patterns appear in modern theories of complex systems. David Bohm, the quantum physicist, developed the idea of the implicate order, an enfolded order that precedes the manifest, explicate order of matter (Bohm, 1980). Bohm’s holistic approach and Jung’s psychoid hypothesis nearly converge: both recognize that pattern is present before the measurable form. But Bohm’s order is neutral and impersonal; it does not contain the numinous aspect that Jung’s archetype holds. A post-Jungian perspective would say: this order also has a symbolic dimension, it is meaning.
This cosmic interpretation has a direct clinical consequence. In in-depth psychotherapy, the analyst continually works with fragile islands of low entropy in the client’s psyche. Traumatic wounds, dissociation, psychosis, these are states where the psyche loses its capacity to organize chaos. Symbolic work, the creation of new meaning, and the restoration of the relationship to the Self, these are processes of reestablishing the cosmic dynamic within the individual (Samuels, 1985). Hillman (1975) goes even further: he places the archetype not just in the head or the cosmos but in the soul of the world (anima mundi). In this sense, every act of psychotherapy is a microcosmic ritual of regenerating form.
If we try to imagine how this theory could be tested empirically, the neuroscientific framework offers intriguing hints. Predictive coding theories (Friston, 2010) already describe the brain as a machine for minimizing entropy: predictions and inhibitions are tools to reduce uncertainty. Psychoanalytic researchers like Carhart-Harris and Friston (2019) propose that psychedelics or dreams temporarily increase brain entropy to break down rigid mental patterns and make space for new coherence. This is a modern echo of the old alchemical maxim: solve et coagula, dissolve and coagulate.
Here, modern neurodynamics and archetypal logic unexpectedly meet. If the Self is the archetypal principle of psychic gravity, it may neurophysiologically manifest through regimes of brain wave synchronization. Theta–gamma phase coupling, identified by Canolty and colleagues (2006) as a key mechanism of symbolic processing, or alpha coherence as an inhibitory filter that keeps the whole intact, could be neural correlates of archetypal order. Of course, this is only hypothetical, but it suggests a direction for interdisciplinary dialogue.
All of this circles back to the initial, heretical hypothesis: meaning might be older than nature. If psyche is the bridge between entropy and differentiation, if archetypes are not just images but psychoid matrices that make form possible, then every symbolic transformation is a small cosmic act of sustaining coherence. Therapy is no longer just the healing of “symptoms,” but the restoration of a numinous low-entropy cluster, a renewed form capable of bearing the pressure of chaos without succumbing to rigidification.
In this light, psyche becomes a kind of inner cosmology. Its task is not to wage war on entropy but to transmute it into myth, dream, and symbol, into everything that keeps us in dialogue with dissolution without letting us dissolve completely. Psyche is the only space in which entropy becomes creative. If so, perhaps meaning is not simply something we make, but something that makes us.
Dragana Favre, Psychiatrist and Jungian Psychotherapist
Dr. Dragana Favre is a psychiatrist, psychotherapist, and a seeker of the human psyche's mysteries. With a medical degree and extensive neuroscience education from prestigious institutions like the Max Planck Institute and Instituto de Neurociencias, she's a seasoned expert. Her unique approach combines Jungian psychotherapy, EMDR, and dream interpretation, guiding patients towards self-discovery and healing. Beyond her profession, Dr. Favre is passionate about science fiction, nature, and cosmology. Her ex-Yugoslavian roots in the small town of Kikinda offer a rich backdrop to her life's journey. She is dedicated to helping people find their true selves, much like an alchemist turning lead into gold.
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