Free Energy Principle

We thus seek to offer a ‘synthesis’, wherein Jungian thought can be meaningfully described in terms of modern neuroscience, without losing the theoretical richness of Jung’s work. The Free Energy Principle and predictive processing

McGovern explicitly names the Free Energy Principle as the neuroscientific framework through which Jungian archetypes and collective unconscious phenomena are to be reinterpreted, positioning predictive processing as the mechanistic bridge.

McGovern, Hugh, Eigenmodes of the Deep Unconscious: The Neuropsychology of Jungian Archetypes and Psychedelic Experience, 2025thesis

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Carhart-Harris, R. and free-energy: L., and Friston, a neurobiological K. J. (2010). The account of default-mode, ego-functions Freudian ideas.

This citation documents the foundational Carhart-Harris and Friston collaboration applying the free-energy framework to default-mode network function and Freudian ego concepts, grounding the entropic brain hypothesis in Fristonian theory.

Carhart-Harris, Robin, The Entropic Brain: A Theory of Conscious States Informed by Neuroimaging Research with Psychedelic Drugs, 2014supporting

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The entropic brain: a theory of conscious states informed by neuroimaging research with psychedelic drugs

Carhart-Harris’s entropic brain theory, which proposes that psychedelics increase neural entropy by relaxing top-down predictive constraints, operates as the empirical complement to the Free Energy Principle’s formal predictions about hierarchical inference.

Carhart-Harris, Robin, The Entropic Brain: A Theory of Conscious States Informed by Neuroimaging Research with Psychedelic Drugs, 2014supporting

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The energic point of view on the other hand is in essence final; the event is traced back from effect to cause on the assumption that some kind of energy underlies the changes in phenomena, that it maintains itself as a constant throughout these changes and finally leads to entropy, a condition of general equilibrium.

Jung’s energic standpoint, with its emphasis on entropy, gradient-following, and teleological direction, provides the classical depth-psychological conceptual precursor to the Free Energy Principle’s variational treatment of surprise minimization.

Jung, Carl Gustav, The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, 1960aside

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Even though we have not yet succeeded in proving that the processes of psychic energy are included in the physical process, the opponents of such a possibility have been equally unsuccessful in separating the psychic from the physical with any certainty.

Jung’s agnostic stance on psychophysical energy relations anticipates the integration the Free Energy Principle later attempts, namely a formal unification of mental and biological self-organization under a single variational principle.

Jung, Carl Gustav, The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, 1960aside

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Jung therefore regarded psychic life, exactly as Freud did, as an energic process. In contrast to Freud, however, he did not regard this energy as psychosexual libido but rather as being in itself entirely indefinite as to content.

Von Franz’s account of Jung’s content-neutral psychic energy establishes the conceptual openness that makes Fristonian free energy a plausible contemporary successor concept within depth-psychological theorizing.

von Franz, Marie-Louise, C.G. Jung: His Myth in Our Time, 1975aside

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The energic value of a cause is never abolished by positing an arbitrary and rational goal: that is always a makeshift. Psychic development cannot be accomplished by intention and will alone; it needs the attraction of the symbol, whose value quantum exceeds that of the cause.

Jung’s argument that psychic transformation requires symbolic attractors whose energic value exceeds prior causes resonates structurally with the Free Energy Principle’s notion of precision-weighted prediction errors driving belief updating.

Jung, C. G. and Pauli, Wolfgang, The Interpretation of Nature and the Psyche, 1955aside

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