Across the depth-psychology corpus, ‘information’ occupies a contested theoretical space that reveals fundamental tensions between objectivist and participatory models of mind. Simondon provides the most philosophically rigorous treatment, arguing that information is neither a static content nor a mere signal but the very engine of individuation: the individual is ‘the being that can conserve or increase a content of information,’ and autonomous selfhood is constituted precisely through this capacity. Thompson, drawing on Maturana and Varela’s autopoietic biology, challenges the cognitivist orthodoxy that information pre-exists its uptake, insisting that from an autonomy perspective the system ‘helps determine what information is or can be,’ and that the dualism of matter versus information dangerously obscures cellular and organismic dynamics. Bowlby and Shapiro appropriate the language of information processing to clinical ends: Bowlby speaks of the ‘exclusion of information from further processing’ as a mechanism of psychological defence, while Shapiro’s EMDR model rests on accessing ‘dysfunctionally stored information networks’ and restoring their adaptive flow. Siegel bridges neuroscience and phenomenology by redefining information as ‘energy in formation,’ an embodied and enacted process rather than a disembodied code. Miller’s motivational interviewing literature treats information exchange as a clinical art requiring ethical restraint, prioritisation, and collaborative framing. The corpus thus ranges from ontological accounts of information as the ground of being to pragmatic, clinical protocols for its exchange.
beings are autonomous when they themselves regulate their own developments and store information and regulate their action themselves by means of this information. The individual is the being that can conserve or increase a content of information.
Simondon makes information the ontological criterion of individuality, equating autonomous selfhood with the capacity to store, regulate, and amplify informational content.
, Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information, 2020thesis
This objectivist notion of information presupposes a heteronomy perspective in which an observer or designer stands outside the system… Information looks different from an autonomy perspective. Here the system, on the basis of its operationally closed dynamics and mode of structural coupling with the environment, helps determine what information is or can be.
Thompson argues that information is not pre-given but co-constituted by the organism’s own operationally closed dynamics, challenging representationalist and heteronomous models of cognition.
, Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind, 2007thesis
Another problem associated with the notion of information is that it almost invariably goes hand in hand with a dualism of matter versus information. This dualism obscures the nature of cellular dynamics.
Thompson diagnoses the ‘matter versus information’ dualism as a conceptual distortion that misrepresents autopoietic cellular processes by treating nucleic acids as representational codes.
, Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind, 2007thesis
The information signal is therefore the capacity to decide, and the ‘quantity of information’ that can be transmitted or registered by a system is proportionate to the number of significative decisions that this system can transmit or register.
Simondon redefines informational quantity in decisional and probabilistic terms, linking information theory to the ontogenesis of individuated being.
, Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information, 2020thesis
This is how energy in formation is what we mean by ‘information.’ Information processing or ‘cognition’ can be seen as an embodied, enacted, extended, and embedded process.
Siegel reframes information as ‘energy in formation,’ grounding cognition in an embodied, enacted, and relational ontology rather than in disembodied data transfer.
, The Developing Mind: How Relationships and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We Are, 2020thesis
Access the dysfunctionally stored information network, Stimulate the information-processing system and maintain it in dynamic form, and Move the information by monitoring the free-association process and initiating procedures to make sure that the target transmutes to an adaptive resolution.
Shapiro’s EMDR framework treats trauma as frozen or dysfunctionally stored information that must be accessed, mobilised, and transmuted into adaptive memorial form through therapeutic intervention.
, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR): Basic Principles, Protocols, and Procedures, 2001thesis
The conceptual tools on which I draw have been made available by students of human information processing. These tools enable us to examine defensive phenomena from a new point of view… Exclusion of information from further processing.
Bowlby imports information-processing concepts into attachment theory to reconceptualise psychological defence as the selective exclusion of emotionally significant information from conscious elaboration.
, Loss: Sadness and Depression (Attachment and Loss, Volume III), 1980supporting
successful EMDR treatment includes a dynamic shifting of the information to functional storage in memory as it is metabolized and assimilated, which means that what is useful is learned and is made available, with appropriate affect, for future use.
Shapiro characterises therapeutic success in terms of information metabolism: dysfunctional material is assimilated into adaptive memory networks and rendered available with appropriate affective valence.
, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR): Basic Principles, Protocols, and Procedures, 2001supporting
the exchange of information from one being to another passes through the present; each being becomes reciprocal with respect to itself to the extent that it becomes reciprocal with respect to the others.
Simondon locates informational exchange in the transindividual dimension, making the inter-subjective present the medium through which beings become mutually constituted.
, Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information, 2020supporting
It is easy to overestimate how much information and advice clients need to be given… Yet they come with a wealth of relevant information themselves; no one knows them better than they do.
Miller argues that effective clinical practice requires recognising the client as an epistemic agent whose pre-existing informational resources must be engaged rather than overwritten.
, Motivational Interviewing: Helping People Change, Third Edition, 2013supporting
Give priority to what the person most wants or needs to know. Particularly when information is likely to evoke emotion, the heart of your message can get lost in extraneous details.
Miller’s motivational interviewing framework treats information provision as emotionally calibrated practice requiring prioritisation, graduated dosing, and attention to the client’s existing knowledge.
, Motivational Interviewing: Helping People Change, Third Edition, 2013supporting
one can almost see the practitioner trying to lift the lid atop the client’s head, fill it with information, and close the lid in the hope that something sinks in.
Miller critiques the ‘vessel-filling’ model of clinical information exchange as a trap rooted in misguided assumptions about fear as motivator and the practitioner as rectifier of epistemic deficits.
, Motivational Interviewing: Helping People Change, Third Edition, 2013supporting
the three levels of the brain and the corresponding information processing interact and affect each other simultaneously, functioning as a cohesive whole, with the degree of integration of each level of processing affecting the efficacy of other levels.
Ogden argues that sensorimotor, emotional, and cognitive information-processing levels are mutually interdependent, such that traumatic dysregulation at any level disrupts the integrated whole.
, Trauma and the Body: A Sensorimotor Approach to Psychotherapy, 2006supporting
The term information refers to the signal value of an environmental event, roughly speaking. Information processing refers to such things as recognizing the signal value of a stimulus and perhaps responding in some appropriate way.
James’s Principles introduces information processing as the decipherment of signal value, providing a foundational behaviourist-cognitive definition that anchors later learning theory.
, The Principles of Psychology, 1890supporting
he explored how information is conveyed. Do neurons use different electrical codes to tell the brain that they are carrying information about different stimuli, such as pain or light or sound? Adrian found that they did not.
Kandel recounts Adrian’s discovery that qualitative differences in sensory information are encoded not in the action potential’s form but in its frequency, establishing a foundational principle of neural information theory.
, In search of memory the emergence of a new science of mind, 2006supporting
Participants who empathized with post-goal emotions were less susceptible to false memories about peripheral information than participants who empathized with pre-goal emotions, suggesting greater breadth in the scope of information attended to and remembered.
Lench demonstrates that emotional state modulates the scope and reliability of information attended to and retained, with goal-related emotional orientation shaping memory selectivity.
, The Function of Emotions: When and Why Emotions Help Us, 2018supporting
countless people get their news and information primarily online… telling the difference between official news sources and random individuals’ input is increasingly difficult.
Burnett observes that the digital flattening of information hierarchies creates epistemic confusion, making source credibility increasingly difficult to discriminate in contemporary media environments.
, The emotional brain lost and found in the science of, 2023aside
Adaptive behavior requires anticipation of significant information-carrying events and preparation of responses in advance.
Ogden frames adaptive orienting as a preparatory scanning for information-carrying environmental events, linking attentional systems to the anticipatory regulation of behaviour.
, Trauma and the Body: A Sensorimotor Approach to Psychotherapy, 2006aside
Information Exchange Is an Art
Miller characterises the clinical exchange of information as a relational art form, situating it within the broader engagement process of motivational interviewing.
, Motivational Interviewing: Helping People Change, Third Edition, 2013aside