Excerpted from Field, Form and Fate: Patterns in Mind, Nature and Psyche, by Michael Conforti, Spring Publications, 1999. Reprinted with permission of the author. Copyright (c) 1999, Michael Conforti. All rights reserved.

Fields in the mathematical and scientific disciplines refer to operations occurring within a three dimensional plane. Fields are space-time dependent processes and the effects can be measured and predicted. Archetypal fields, on the other hand, appear to function non-locally in that their influence is not space-time dependent, nor from what we can tell, are they subject to any causal limitations are fields in the outer, natural world. In much the same manner as an attractor site serves to draw the trajectory of a system into a specific region or basin of attraction, so too does the archetype work through the creation of an attractor. In psychology, the attractor is the complex.

The complex, as defined by Yoram Kaufmann, a Jungian analyst, is a quanta of energy organized around a certain theme, for instance a mother complex, a father complex, or a sexual complex, etc. The complex, like the attractor, functions much like a magnetic epicenter creating the convergence of archetypal potentialities into a singularity, a highly patterned behavioral tendency, drawing to it one specific face of an archetype. Since there is a great deal of variation in the mother complex, we need to identify the particular alignment an individual has with the mother archetype.

The complex, in this case the mother complex, then works to attract like experiences so that one's life becomes an expression of an archetypal component. David Peat's book Synchronicity: The Bridge Between Mind and Matter (1987), is filled with examples of this phenomena. The complex creates a type of antenna around individuals tuning them in and aligning them with the specific frequency of an archetype. This tuning mechanism of the psyche determines which frequencies can be accessed and which will be tuned out. I suspect that many of us have gone through times when the issue we were dealing with was suddenly manifested in virtually every facet of our lives. This tuning is a complicated, fascinating, and surprisingly exacting phenomena. It works by creating alignments and entrainments with only those segments of life which match the constant of the constellated archetype. In other words only those themes and issues which resonant with the individual's alignment of an archetype will be constellated.

Archetypal Alignment

A reductionist might suggest that this specialized tuning can be simply explained as a conscious selection process where the individual selects what one will and will not be influenced by. However, when we realize the consistency of archetypal expression plus the high degree of synchronistic experience constellated around it, we are forced to consider that this involves much more than a personal selection. Instead we do well to realize the autonomy of these dynamics and see that individual consciousness has little play in the actual activation of the alignment. Here we can consider the unfolding of the archetype as the manifestation of a fated factor intrinsic to the individual's life.

Information about archetypal fields, as well as important information about one's life, is holographically encoded in the most minute details in a person's life. While I wrote my doctoral dissertation on the initial interview a number of years ago, I am only now beginning to realize that my interest was in this area of holographically encoded and archetypal information and the fact that archetypes tend to be expressed through the formation of highly stabilized patterns.

In comprehending the interactional patterns that are established even at the moment the client decides to begin treatment, the therapist gains access to a wealth of material about the client's life. Even the details of the initial phone conversation often reveal the properties of the archetypal pattern in which the patient (and also the therapist) is embedded. This way of understanding patterns is similar to what enabled Freud to make fairly reliable clinical assessments based on his client's relationship to money and sex. His observations about the phallic and anal personality types remains a valuable diagnostic yardstick. In observing, for instance, the client's tendency to hoard money, Freud realized that a certain anal-retentive quality or pattern had permeated the individual's life, now serving as a type of periodic or fixed attractor site, drawing to it only self-similar experiences evidenced in the sexual, financial, and emotional tendencies.

The power of fields and their tendency towards self-iteration/ replication results in the client-therapist dyad organizing around a set of archetypal regularities. Many of the interactional dynamics established between the client and therapist are influenced by archetypal fields, which become manifested in the interactional configurations created between them. The specific pattern is often apparent in the client's initial phone call to the therapist. It unfolds through the questions he or she asks the clinician, and the special conditions of treatment he may request. Similarly many of the clinician's responses and initial interventions are representative of this field and its informational equivalent. In this light we do well to reconsider our understanding of transference and counter-transference phenomena. We can look at these operations as the unfolding of a field whose powerful influence draws both members of the therapeutic dyad, often unknowingly, into its purposeful spin thus maintaining the pattern.

Expression of the Constellated Archetype

For instance, in treating a client with a history of incest, we often find a reactivation of incest boundary problems occurring in the therapy where some boundary violation or transgression inevitably occurs in the interactions between client and therapist. The influence of the archetypal field, in this instance the victim field (including the attendant properties and activities of the perpetrator) works to entrain both members of the therapeutic dyad into alignment with the personal trauma (which remains essentially archetypal in nature). This creates an interactional field whose properties and dynamics stands as a recapitulation -- a new edition of this personal and archetypal constellation. Rather than viewing these interactions from the perspective of transference counter- transference, I find it more accurate to say that the psyche tends to draw and entrain both the client and therapist into a synchronized pattern where their behavior reveals the nature of the activated archetype. Thus one can read the field in reverse in that the details of the relationship provide a picture of the constellated archetype. I am consistently struck by the stabilization of form within these archetypal configurations, and the fidelity with which the client-therapist dyad reenacts the tenets of both the personal past and the archetypal field within which each are embedded.

Each manifestation of form appears in the world through a consolidation of the informational content of a DNA or archetypal blueprint, then congeals into a recognizable pattern. It is through these patterns that the analyst learns about the various archetypal configurations, and identifies the issues that need to be addressed to facilitate healing in much the same way as the physician looks to recognizable patterns to determine the most appropriate treatment for a patient.

Much of my research into the initial interview matches the thinking of many dynamical systems theorists who posit that the steady state of a system often reveals both its past, and occasionally even its potential future state. "The Fournier Transform" is a mathematical formulation which suggests that a system's history is contained in its wave function. Imagine the two following scenarios. In the first case we see a body of water and notice a particular wave formation. The waves are of a certain height and strength heading in a northeasterly direction. In the second case we have much larger waves heading in opposite directions. An oceanographer skilled at reading the ocean, such as a Polynesian sailor, could tell you what sort of boat produced which waves, and in addition, could provide minute details as to the speed of the boat, its direction, and how long ago in traveled this waterway. The point is that the waves and the system's steady state are incredibly rich in information.

Perturbations as Interruptions of Pattern

While the Fournier Transform informs us about the system's past, we can also make reliable inferences about potential future states by positing that if the current steady state is not interrupted by a perturbation proportionately as strong as that of the original pattern, it could proceed virtually endlessly into the future. Thus we have the workings of replicative phenomena. Many colleagues, including Fred Abraham, Ervin Laszlo, David Peat, and Peter Saunders have challenged this position regarding the need for a high level perturbation stating that in dynamic systems, change often occurs through the presence of small rather than large perturbations.

However my investigations in the clinical domain finds that the human psyche, when embedded within a specific, archetypal alignment and field, remains much more refractory to change than other systems in the natural world and tends to require large perturbations to promote change. In order for the human psyche to change, it must find a way to tolerate the breakdown of the various denial structures which remain repressed while the replicative regime is in force. Here we are talking about moving the system by way of third state, informational catastrophes whereby the perturbation introduces highly divergent material that the system has to respond to by either adaptation and integration or through the strengthening of the denial structures

I used to view the pattern as an autonomous entity emerging from the archetypal field and serving to influence the particular sequence of events. This results in some configuration of form. However Laszlo explains that the pattern, which can change, is a manifestation of the information contained within a field and is not in and of itself autonomous.

In many respects Laszlo's distinction between patterns and informational fields parallels Jung's understanding of the relationship between symbol and archetype. The pattern, like the symbol, emerges from an archetypal context, standing as the representation and "settling" in the form of the field. Both views attribute the generation of the original information represented in the form of a pattern, logically, to the source: the archetypal informational field.

Repetition as Resonance

Repetition stands as an autonomous event, morphogenetically coded, with an information-rich set of directives embedded in each and every system about its developmental trajectory. These habits and tendencies are created by nature and the Self, not consciously or unconsciously by the patient or therapist.

The original traumatic event or series of traumatic experiences will find their way into the treatment, most often through the repetition of a set of experiences similar in nature to the formative situation. It appears that the repetition of these events between the client and therapist creates a resonance and entrainment to the underlying archetypal constellation. All life develops through the creation and development of such resonances between the contained and the container. In every system there exists a relationship between these two.

In looking at how the brain establishes resonance patterns as it works to process new information, we find processes of replication and resonance. Research has taught us that the brain processes and metabolizes novelty through a type of cross-referencing of the new event with what is already known and has already been experienced. This cross-referential processing produces a resonance between past and current events whereby new information and experience are understood through their relationship to prior knowledge. For instance, when we meet someone new at a conference or at a party, we usually search for some common point of reference between us and this new person. Possibly we know someone in common or have been interested in similar things. Cross-referencing makes what was novel familiar by drawing it into a resonance with what is already known.

These are not humanly contrived, consciously derived operations. Instead they exist as the psyche's or nature's way for making connections and building relationships. I am suggesting that the same set of dynamics operative in the biological and social domain also drives processes occurring within the psyche. While many theorists suggest that the psyche is modeled after the brain or vice versa, we can eliminate these arguments by collapsing the dualistic formulation of mind/body or brain/psyche separation. Instead we may consider that the operations and information for their respective functioning derive from a similar source. We begin moving toward a unitary theory -- a consilience -- for biological, conscious, and unconscious functioning. These processes represent a set of natural laws and regularities in the life process operative whenever and wherever evolution occurs. These laws are not confined to any one arena.

The regularity of pattern repetition in life speaks to the strength of the preformed, archetypal constellations that are continually made manifest and influence much of individual and collective life. The enduring nature of the patterns and their tendency to introduce the individual to what one could call the destiny factor, suggests that archetypal informational fields exist as the central organizing factor in life. It is actually quite astounding to think of the force of the compulsion to repeat, especially in light of the continued havoc and discomfort such enactment brings. Rather than offer a reductive explanation for the compulsion to repeat, we may be better prepared to understand this phenomena if we look at laws in that the conception and growth of the fetus closely adheres to a set of morphogenetic regularities. Any alterations in these informational and morphogenetically coded, developmental stages can be fatal to the life of the organism. Replication is not a developmental prerogative so much as nature's imperative. However for life to proceed from simplicity to complexity, a system must move beyond simple replications and therefore to the creation of dissipative structures

From Form to Chaos to Higher Form

As we begin speaking about the role of dissipative structures, we move into thermodynamic and chaos theory. Thermodynamic theory has much to offer in our investigation of repetition. Of interest in thermodynamic theory is the role of entropy, and now with the introduction of chaos theory into the field, the creation of negentropic systems. It looks at the system's move away from and toward equilibrium positions. Both dynamics are essential for understanding the function of repetition in human as well as nonhuman systems. When viewing repetition from the perspective of thermodynamics, we find a seeming contradiction in that it both creates and disturbs a system's equilibrium.

Repetition of a pattern appears to maintain equilibrium by restricting the degree of freedom and novelty allowed to influence growth. On one level there is a movement toward stability, while on an unconscious level, an individual's continued repetition of a painful pattern will cause a considerable amount of discomfort in the unconscious and create a degree of disequilibrium. While the repetition of abuse may be familiar, it is detrimental to an individual's soul. In this light, no matter how familiar the behavioral pattern may be, the unconscious recognition of pain will always represent an assault to the soul because meaning, evolution, and novelty are restricted within the replicative mode.

On the archetypal level, repetition creates a thermodynamic dis-equilibrium. At this point in the replicative mode, the human psyche is pushed toward a bifurcation point because of our intrinsic need for growth and meaning making. Psyche has the possibility of utilizing repetition as a chaotic, rather than a fixed or periodic attractor, thus moving the entire system to a higher level of complexity (negentropy) or of dissolving into endless repetitions.

Describing nonlinear dynamics and the types of processes activated as the system moves from stability to instability, Ervin Laszlo states that a system that is far from equilibrium may evolve toward a new dynamic regime that is radically different from a stationary state at or near equilibrium. (Evolution,1987, 21)

As the repetition moves an individual or system into a chaotic regime, the possibility for complexity and greater development is activated. Recall that, as already established, evolution becomes virtually impossible if the system's parameters remain overly constricted. Behavioral patterns, thoughts, and actions tend to cluster more and more tightly around specific archetypal alignments/themes thus further diminishing the opportunity for growth. With clustering and complexing around an archetypal and informational singularity, an individual is, developmentally speaking, thrown back to a phylogenetically earlier phase of life. Similar to life and dynamics at the unicellular level, movement within the replicative mode proceeds through a spinning out of autopoietic, self-similar processes.

Disruption of stability represents a natural phase transition in the life of every system. While we have the continual drive toward self-replication, there is an equally strong movement toward complexity inherent in the evolution of life at virtually every level. Continual repetition will eventually result in a deadening of possibilities thus reinforcing tendencies to stay closed.

Freud observed the existence of two seemingly opposing forces within the psyche. One trajectory moves toward replication-a repetitive cycling of energy-a death instinct while the other arm of the system's growth involves a movement toward a life instinct- -a higher form of new life.

Repetition, if it endlessly spins in its own cycle and parameters, becomes entropic and eventually dampens the creation of new energy and growth possibilities. Hence the progressive is suddenly punctuated by what is novel, is thrown into chaos by the introduction of an information catastrophe. As we now understand from chaos theory, nonlinear dynamics, and from much of Ervin Laszlo's work in General and Dynamical Systems Theory, complexity only arises in response to a system's move from either equilibrium or non-equilibrium to a far-from equilibrium position. Laszlo (1987) describes the far-from-equilibrium state with the following:

The third possible state of systems is the state far from thermal and chemical equilibrium. Systems in this state are nonlinear and occasionally indeterminate. They do not tend toward minimum free energy and maximum entropy but may amplify certain fluctuations and evolve toward a new dynamic regime that is radically different from stationary states at or near equilibrium. (Evolution, 21)

Opportunities for Healing

Understanding of field phenomena may help us to translate and convert unconscious behaviors into opportunities for greater understanding. Awareness of what I am calling an "archetypal morphology" and the capacity to recognize the formation of transpersonal patterns may help us understand those movements which all too often become national and global catastrophes. Perhaps with greater understanding, we may develop useful intervention strategies to stave off future eruptions of violence. Knowledge of the effects and workings of archetypal fields brings yet another potential benefit to humanity. By acknowledging that these fields are transpersonally generated and not personally created, we can begin to reestablish a relationship between the ego/consciousness and the transpersonal.

The idea of a transpersonal dimension has been with us since the beginning of civilization. Every nation and culture has recognized the presence of these non-personally acquired influences as evidenced through the universality of the god concept. As cultures have revered the relationship between the individual and the transpersonal, we too need to find some way for its inclusion back into our notions of consciousness. In this way we create the opportunity to reconnect to the generative matrix of human and global experience.

I have found that the creation of resonance patterns, coherence, and synchronization in the interactional fields function as a primary vehicle for healing and for the creation of greater complexity.The capacity to recognize and understand the meaning of archetypal fields offers important opportunities for resolving conflicts on the personal and collective levels.As individuals develop their ability to create internal change and order, we may in turn see an exponential increase in our collective ability to change.