Complexity

Complexity, as treated across the depth-psychology corpus, is no mere synonym for complication. The term operates on at least three distinct registers. First, as a formal metric: Barrett defines complexity as a property describing structures that efficiently create and transmit information, distinguishing it sharply from colloquial usage. Second, as an ontological claim: McGilchrist advances the radical thesis that complexity is the norm of reality, not a special emergent condition — simplicity is what requires explanation, being achieved only by stripping away nearly all of the actual. Third, as a psychodynamic principle: Siegel, Winhall, and Conforti draw on complexity theory and nonlinear dynamics to illuminate how mental systems self-organize, how chaos and rigidity bracket health, and how integration is the telos of complex living systems. Ulanov’s extended engagement with chaos theory positions complexity as the mathematical correlate of the Jungian symbol — irreducible, self-similar, sensitive to initial conditions. Berry’s archetypal perspective adds a necessary caution: complexity is not itself the aim; decorative or associative complexity is not transformative. The field thus holds in tension a scientific formalism, a metaphysical claim about the primacy of the complex, and a clinical invitation to tolerate and work with that which cannot be reduced.

In the library 17 passages

complexity is the norm, and simplicity represents a special case of complexity, achieved by cleaving off and disregarding almost all of the vast reality that surrounds whatever it is we are for the moment modelling as simple

McGilchrist inverts the conventional assumption, arguing that complexity is ontologically primary and simplicity is a derived, impoverished abstraction rather than the foundational condition from which complexity arises.

McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021thesis

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complexity is the norm, and simplicity represents a special case of complexity, achieved by cleaving off and disregarding almost all of the vast reality that surrounds whatever it is we are for the moment modelling as simple

A duplicate source confirming McGilchrist’s central metaphysical claim that complexity is the universal norm, with simplicity as its limit case.

McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021thesis

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I don’t mean complexity colloquially, as in ‘gosh, that brain sure is complicated,’ but something more formal. Complexity is a metric to describe any structure that efficiently creates and transmits informa

Barrett establishes complexity as a technical scientific metric applied to the brain as a system, grounding the term in information theory and neuroscience rather than in loose common usage.

Barrett, Lisa Feldman, How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain, 2017thesis

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we see a universe evolving from less to more structured, from equilibrium to complexity: This is certainly not the picture a naïve application of the second law of thermodynamics would suggest.

McGilchrist, citing Smolin, argues that the cosmological trajectory is toward increasing complexity and structure, contradicting entropic models and supporting the view that complexity is a natural tendency of reality.

McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021thesis

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complex systems have an innate self-organizing capacity… Complexity theory comes from a branch of mathematics, and in the true spirit of consilience, it has been applied to many different fields of study

Winhall situates complexity theory as the theoretical backbone of systems-based clinical work, connecting mathematical origins with therapeutic applications in trauma, family systems, and integration.

Winhall, Jan, Treating Trauma and Addiction with the Felt Sense Polyvagal Modelsupporting

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there is a tension between simplicity and complexity. Very simple equations can describe radical transformations that, when charted as a graph, are extremely complex.

Ulanov maps the tension between simplicity and complexity onto chaos theory and Jungian symbolism, arguing that complex dynamic systems produce configurations analogous to symbols — irreducible yet patterned.

Ulanov, Ann Belford, The Feminine in Jungian Psychology and in Christian Theology, 1971supporting

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the possibility of utilizing the repetition as a chaotic, rather than a fixed or periodic attractor, thus moving the entire system to a higher level of complexity (negentropy)

Conforti applies complexity and nonlinear dynamics to archetypal psychology, framing psychic growth as a movement toward higher-order complexity through bifurcation and chaotic reorganization.

Conforti, Michael, Field, Form, and Fate: Patterns in Mind, Nature, and Psyche, 1999supporting

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the self-organizational properties of the system create a sense of ordered complexity out of the trillions of synaptic connections that can be potentially fired.

Siegel argues that the brain’s self-organizational dynamics produce ordered complexity from massive neural potential, with emotional states functioning as the primary value system shaping which patterns of complexity become engrained.

Siegel, Daniel J., The Developing Mind: How Relationships and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We Are, 2020supporting

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the complex systems of our minds are capable of abrupt transitions into markedly different states, ones we may commonly refer to as facets, aspects, sides, or parts of who we are.

Siegel draws on complexity theory to explain discontinuous self-state transitions, framing psychological multiplicity as a feature of complex nonlinear systems rather than pathology.

Siegel, Daniel J., The Developing Mind: How Relationships and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We Are, 2020supporting

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Chaos complexity and, 98 continuity and self-states and, 83 emotional growth and, 407 … integration and, 16–17, 16f, 22, 35, 342f, 446–447

The index entry reveals how centrally Siegel’s developmental framework positions complexity in relation to chaos, integration, emotional growth, and self-states — indicating complexity as a structural concept throughout the text.

Siegel, Daniel J., The Developing Mind: How Relationships and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We Are, 2020supporting

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The memory of unique entities and events, namely, those that are both unique and personal, requires high-complexity contexts. We can glean a hierarchical progression of complexity here.

Damasio applies a hierarchical conception of complexity to memory processing, arguing that personal and unique memories require higher-complexity neural contexts than generic or procedural ones.

Damasio, Antonio, Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain, 2010supporting

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nervous systems began their existence as assistants to the body, as coordinators of the life process in bodies complex and diversified enough that the functional articulation of tissues, organs, and systems… required a dedicated system to accomplish the coordination.

Damasio frames nervous system evolution as a response to biological complexity, positioning the mind as a by-product of managing ever-greater somatic complexity rather than as an independent faculty.

Damasio, Antonio R., The strange order of things life, feeling, and the making, 2018supporting

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their orbits are so complex as hard… Never repeating—yet always resembling—themselves, they are the epitome of contradiction: infinitely recognizable, ultimately unpredictable.

Ulanov’s analysis of strange attractors frames irreducible complexity as the mathematical signature of symbolic processes — self-similar yet non-repeating, resisting reduction to simpler patterns.

Ulanov, Ann Belford, The Feminine in Jungian Psychology and in Christian Theology, 1971supporting

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if someone has in their intellect the idea of some machine devised with extraordinary complexity, we are certainly quite justified in asking what is the cause of this idea.

Descartes invokes complexity in an epistemological argument about the causal requirements of ideas, treating complexity as evidence of a need for an adequate explanatory ground.

Descartes, René, Meditations on First Philosophy, 2008aside

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