Neural Entropy

Neural entropy occupies a pivotal position in the depth-psychology corpus precisely because it bridges the thermodynamic language inherited from Freudian metapsychology and the empirical neuroscience of altered states. The term achieves its most concentrated elaboration in Carhart-Harris’s 2014 entropic brain hypothesis, wherein the degree of disorder or unpredictability in brain network dynamics is proposed as a quantifiable index of consciousness type: normal waking consciousness operates at suppressed entropy, just below criticality, while primary states — psychedelic experience, REM sleep, early psychosis — are characterized by measurably elevated network entropy. This framework carries direct implications for depth psychology, since primary consciousness maps onto what Freud and Jung described as the unconscious or primary process, and the collapse of default mode network organization that produces elevated entropy correlates phenomenologically with ego dissolution and the emergence of archetypal content. Von Franz approaches adjacent territory from the opposite direction, asking whether archetypes themselves might function as sources of negentropy — local reversals of entropic drift through psychically activated organizational patterns. Jung’s own thermodynamic language in the Collected Works anticipates these discussions, treating psychic energy and its equalization in terms closely resonant with Boltzmann’s entropy formulation. McGovern synthesizes these traditions, reading psychedelic-state entropy increases as the neurological condition for archetypal salience. The central tension in the corpus is whether neural entropy is a deficit to be corrected or a generative, therapeutically exploitable state.

In the library 14 passages

entropy is suppressed in normal waking consciousness, meaning that the brain operates just below criticality. It is argued that this entropy suppression furnishes normal waking consciousness with a constrained quality and associated metacognitive functions

This passage states the core thesis: normal waking consciousness is defined by sub-critical, suppressed neural entropy, while primary states cross into elevated entropy at the criticality threshold.

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

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the transition from normal waking consciousness to primary consciousness is marked by an increase in system entropy. INCREASED NETWORK ENTROPY IN THE PSYCHEDELIC STATE

Carhart-Harris advances the general principle that the psychedelic-state transition constitutes empirical evidence for neural entropy as the scalar variable distinguishing primary from secondary consciousness.

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

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primary states may exhibit ‘criticality,’ i.e., the property of being poised at a ‘critical’ point in a transition zone between order and disorder where certain phenomena such as power-law scaling appear

The passage situates neural entropy within self-organized criticality theory, defining primary states as systems maximally sensitive to perturbation at the order-disorder boundary.

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

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it is only there, if anywhere, that we might discover instances or sources of negentropy. It does not seem convincing to me that information is eo ipso identical with a pouvoir d’organisation which undoes entropy

Von Franz argues that archetypes, activated by emotional stimulation, constitute the psyche’s only plausible source of negentropy — a counterposition to any purely informational account of entropy reversal.

von Franz, Marie-Louise, Psyche and Matter, 2014thesis

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If the brain was to be sampled during a primary state (such as a psychedelic state) we would predict that the rules that normally apply to normal waking consciousness will become less robust

The passage provides the empirical prediction flowing from the entropic brain thesis: network orthogonality and anti-correlation break down as neural entropy rises in primary states.

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

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primary consciousness may be a sub-optima… one’s sense of self is never far from consciousness: ‘Normally, there is nothing of which we are more certain than the feeling of our self, of our own ego.’

This passage connects suppressed neural entropy to the DMN’s role as substrate of the ego, integrating Freudian self-psychology with the entropy framework.

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

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According to Boltzmann’s formulation, this levelling process corresponds to a transition from an improbable to a probable state, whereby the possibility of further change is increasingly limited

Jung applies Boltzmann’s entropy formulation to psychic energy, describing the equalization of opposites as an entropic process that reduces further psychic mobility — an early depth-psychological cognate of neural entropy.

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

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What is accomplished in spite of the decreasing negentropy of the cosmos, and at its expense, is the accumulation of information by conscious beings incarnated in matter

Von Franz’s footnote on Costa de Beauregard frames conscious information accumulation as a negentropic counter-tendency to cosmic entropy increase, providing metaphysical context for neural entropy discourse.

von Franz, Marie-Louise, Psyche and Matter, 2014supporting

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For those interested in the rich phenomenology of the psychedelic experience and how this relates to Freudian and/or Jungian descriptions of ‘the unconscious mind’

This methodological passage situates the entropic brain paper explicitly within the tradition of psychoanalytic metapsychology, linking neural entropy to depth-psychological accounts of the unconscious.

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

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we seek to explore how recent advances in the neurosciences provide clarity on the neurological conditions under which archetypal content becomes more especially salient

McGovern frames the neural conditions for archetypal salience — implicitly elevated neural entropy — as the bridge between Jungian depth psychology and contemporary neuroscience.

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

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The second law says that isolated systems increase their randomness, becoming more disordered and less complex and structured as time moves forward. This is certainly not the picture a naïve application of the second law of thermodynamics would suggest

McGilchrist invokes the second law of thermodynamics to argue that complex open systems — including brains — characteristically resist entropic dissipation, providing cosmological context for the neural entropy debate.

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

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Maintenance performs a function counter to the one-way direction of entropy down toward meaningless, patternless, random dissociation

Hillman, in an archetypal-psychological register, figures entropy as cultural and metaphysical dissolution, implicitly treating the maintenance of order as a psychological as well as physical counter-entropic act.

Hillman, James, Kinds of Power: A Guide to Its Intelligent Uses, 1995aside

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as we understand that for life to proceed from simplicity to complexity, a system must move beyond simple replication, and with this evolution comes the creation of dissipative structures

Conforti draws on thermodynamic and dissipative-structure theory to argue that psychological complexity requires systems operating far from equilibrium — a structural parallel to high-entropy neural states.

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

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