The term ‘field’ occupies a remarkably plurivalent position across the depth-psychology corpus, functioning simultaneously as a physical-ontological concept, a psychological-clinical construct, and a transpersonal-archetypal category. In the physical register, McGilchrist draws extensively on quantum field theory to argue that continuity, not particle-like discreteness, is the fundamental substrate of reality — a claim with direct consequences for how consciousness and world interpenetrate. Conforti advances the most sustained depth-psychological elaboration, proposing an ‘archetypal field theory’ wherein psychic fields — analogous to morphogenetic fields in biology — organize both inner experience and outer form, giving rise to non-local, cross-personal patterns discernible in clinical encounters and collective life. Pauli provides the bridge between physics and psychology, treating the gravitational and quantum fields as models for a broader epistemological revision of causality. Yalom employs the perceptual construct of field-dependence/field-independence, derived from Witkin’s cognitive-style research, to map personality organization along an embeddedness-autonomy continuum with direct clinical import. Simondon introduces the field as the medium of individuation, contrasting it with Cartesian contact-action models. What unites these diverse deployments is a shared resistance to atomistic, particle-like reductionism: ‘field’ names the relational, continuous, enveloping medium within which discrete forms arise and by which they remain connected.
the actual events which evolve within the client-therapist field often represent a mapping of their mutual internal processes … Singular events can be viewed as holographic encapsulations of the entire field.
Conforti argues that the therapeutic field functions holographically — each singular clinical event encoding the structure of the whole interactive field between client and therapist.
, Field, Form, and Fate: Patterns in Mind, Nature, and Psyche, 1999thesis
as my uncle approached the transition from life to death, he was already embedded in a death field. It was the archetype of death, which everyone has and will at some point experience, that created the impressions and experiences shared by everyone in attendance.
Conforti proposes that archetypes generate enveloping fields with non-local influence, evidenced phenomenologically by the shared experience of a ‘death field’ preceding physical death.
, Field, Form, and Fate: Patterns in Mind, Nature, and Psyche, 1999thesis
Jung … distinguished between an energetic, archetypal field and its static expression in symbols and images. The idea is also found in myth and religious speculation as often happens with scientific truths beyond intellectual reach.
Conforti situates Jung’s distinction between dynamic archetypal field and static symbolic expression within a broader convergence of scientific, mythic, and religious understandings of how form is enfolded in field.
, Field, Form, and Fate: Patterns in Mind, Nature, and Psyche, 1999thesis
In Sheldrake’s hypothesis of ‘formative causation,’ we find organisms acted upon by an external morphogenetic field, whereas in Goodwin’s view the field and organism are related. In this regard Goodwin’s work collapses the duality between form and field.
Conforti distinguishes Sheldrake’s externalist morphogenetic field from Goodwin’s relational model, arguing that the latter — consistent with Jungian archetypal theory — dissolves the duality between field and the forms it generates.
, Field, Form, and Fate: Patterns in Mind, Nature, and Psyche, 1999thesis
while this explanation speaks of the spacio-temporal influence of fields, archetypal influences and archetypal fields are not space-time dependent and have non-local influences.
Conforti distinguishes electromagnetic fields from archetypal fields by asserting the latter’s independence from space-time constraints, enabling non-local psychic influence.
, Field, Form, and Fate: Patterns in Mind, Nature, and Psyche, 1999thesis
A field, on the other hand, is something that exists everywhere as a property of space. Its intensity may be small, but it is never zero.
McGilchrist uses quantum field theory to establish that fields — unlike bounded particles — are ubiquitous properties of space, supporting his broader argument that continuity and flowing process underlie apparent discreteness.
, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021thesis
All particles are waves in a universally distributed continuous shared field that envelops each and all of us: values in the field change with space and time.
McGilchrist, citing Tong, argues that the fundamental ontological substrate is a continuous shared field rather than discrete particles, with direct implications for a relational understanding of consciousness and world.
, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021thesis
The difference [between fields and particles] lies in how we choose to perceive reality — the picture in our mind — and this difference is immense.
McGilchrist frames the field-versus-particle distinction as a fundamental perceptual and epistemological choice, connecting it to hemispheric modes of apprehending reality.
, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting
Wave and particle are two modes of being of the same field phenomenon: this makes possible the coming together of union and division, of continuity (the wave) with discreteness (the particle) within a single uniting phenomenon (the field).
McGilchrist presents the field as the unifying phenomenon that reconciles the apparent polarity between continuity and discreteness, wave and particle.
, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting
the conception which considers the individual as the singularity of a wave and which consequently requires a field does not accept the Cartesian representation of individuation.
Simondon argues that conceiving individuation as a wave-singularity — and thus requiring a field — fundamentally departs from Cartesian individuation by contact, opening a non-Cartesian epistemology of relational being.
, Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information, 2020thesis
the theory a new physical reality, namely the gravitational field. This field appears as ten functions of space and time, which, as coefficients of the invariant quadratic form of the metric, undergo appropriate transformation in a general transformation of coordinates.
Pauli describes the gravitational field as a new category of physical reality introduced by general relativity, linking field theory to a broader revision of causality relevant to his later psychophysical speculations.
, Writings on Physics and Philosophy, 1994supporting
We first consider classical fields, which, like scalars, vectors and tensors, transform with respect to rotations in the ordinary space according to a one-valued representation.
Pauli situates classical field theory within the mathematical framework of symmetry transformations, establishing the formal scaffolding for his later bridging of quantum physics and Jungian psychology.
, Writings on Physics and Philosophy, 1994supporting
In the ‘field-dependent’ mode (analogous to the ultimate rescuer style) the individual’s perception is strongly dominated by the global organization of the field. In the ‘field-independent’ mode … parts of the field are experienced as discrete from the background.
Yalom maps Witkin’s cognitive-style polarity of field-dependence and field-independence onto existential personality configurations of embeddedness and autonomy, grounding clinical typology in perceptual research.
, Existential Psychotherapy, 1980supporting
There is a consistent tendency at one extreme for experience to be global and diffuse, and at the other for it to be delineated and structured. Witkin refers to these poles of cognitive style as ‘global’ and ‘articulated,’ respectively.
Yalom elaborates Witkin’s field-dependence construct by specifying the phenomenological poles — global diffusion versus articulated structure — as they manifest in cognition, body image, and social orientation.
, Existential Psychotherapy, 1980supporting
Psychotherapists who are themselves field-independent tend to favor either a directive or passive, observational approach to a patient, whereas field-dependent therapists favor personal and mutual relationships with their patients.
Yalom demonstrates that the therapist’s own field-dependence or field-independence shapes the relational and technical character of the therapeutic encounter.
, Existential Psychotherapy, 1980supporting
the position of S in so far as it is not located, as it is only locatable somewhere in the field of the Other, in the virtual field that the Other develops by his presence as field of reflection of the subject.
Lacan configures the subject’s position as locatable only within the virtual field of the Other, treating the analytic encounter as a field of reflection in which narcissistic identification becomes visible.
, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book VIII: Transference, 2015aside
the way in which these individual differences affect competition for the control of visual attention … a task is carried out requiring attention to one’s non-favoured visual field.
McGilchrist uses the neurological concept of visual field to discuss hemispheric competition for attentional control, grounding perceptual asymmetry in concrete cortical dynamics.
, The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World, 2009aside
Retraction of the field of consciousness, or narrowing of attention, is characteristic of both ANP and EP.
Van der Hart employs ‘field of consciousness’ to describe the narrowing of attention characteristic of dissociative personality parts, following Janet’s classic formulation.
, The Haunted Self Structural Dissociation and the Treatmentaside