Within the depth-psychology corpus, ‘quantum’ functions less as a technical term of physics than as an epistemological and ontological lever — a point of radical departure from the mechanistic worldview that has historically dominated both science and the psychological imagination. The term enters the discourse through several distinct channels. Wolfgang Pauli, whose exchange with Jung remains foundational, treats quantum mechanics as the decisive generalisation of classical causality, insisting that the observer’s irreducible role in measurement has permanent consequences for any theory of mind-matter relations. Iain McGilchrist recruits quantum field theory to destabilise the priority of particles over fields, aligning the physicist’s insight that ‘deep down, the theory is not quantum’ with a metaphysics of continuity inherited from James and Bergson, and pressing quantum entanglement into service as a potential substrate for consciousness. Ponte and Schäfer draw the most explicit bridge, arguing that the ontology of quantum physics — its invisible probability waves, its virtual states, its non-material forms — structurally parallels Jung’s archetypes and the collective unconscious. Gilbert Simondon mobilises quantum theory’s integration of the continuous and the discontinuous to rethink physical individuation. Strassman raises quantum computing as a speculative frame for DMT-altered access to parallel realities. Across these voices, the central tension is whether quantum indeterminacy and non-locality genuinely dissolve the Cartesian wall between psyche and matter, or whether such analogies remain heuristically compelling but ultimately undemonstrated.
Quantum theory … involves, in an essential way, the causal participation of the minds of us observers, while classical mechanics strictly bans any such effect of mental realities on the world of matter.
McGilchrist, citing Stapp, argues that quantum theory uniquely mandates the observer’s causal agency in actualising physical potentials, directly implicating mind in the structure of reality.
, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021thesis
Quantum theory … involves, in an essential way, the causal participation of the minds of us observers, while classical mechanics strictly bans any such effect of mental realities on the world of matter.
McGilchrist, citing Stapp, argues that quantum theory uniquely mandates the observer’s causal agency in actualising physical potentials, directly implicating mind in the structure of reality.
, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021thesis
Once one reaches quantum level, events cannot be separated from the consciousness of the observer, and the laws leave a place for mind in the description of every molecule … mind is already inherent in every electron.
McGilchrist argues that quantum mechanics dissolves the boundary between mind and matter at every scale, refuting the claim that quantum effects are irrelevant to the mind-brain problem.
, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021thesis
Once one reaches quantum level, events cannot be separated from the consciousness of the observer, and the laws leave a place for mind in the description of every molecule … mind is already inherent in every electron.
McGilchrist argues that quantum mechanics dissolves the boundary between mind and matter at every scale, refuting the claim that quantum effects are irrelevant to the mind-brain problem.
, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021thesis
both of these disciplines have led at the same time to revolutionary changes in the Western understanding of the cosmic order, discovering a non-emp
Ponte and Schäfer establish their central thesis: that quantum physics and Jungian psychology converged independently on a non-empiricist, spiritually resonant revision of the cosmic order.
, Carl Gustav Jung, Quantum Physics and the Spiritual Mind: A Mystical Vision of the Twenty-First Century, 2013thesis
molecular wave functions have no units of matter or energy. They are pure, non-material forms. The same is true for Jung’s archetypes: like the wave functions of quantum systems, they are pure, non-material forms.
Ponte and Schäfer argue that quantum wave functions and Jungian archetypes share the same ontological structure as pure, non-material forms, grounding an explicit physics-psychology homology.
, Carl Gustav Jung, Quantum Physics and the Spiritual Mind: A Mystical Vision of the Twenty-First Century, 2013thesis
quantum theories penetrate into more profound strata of reality than all previous theories. The theory of relativity itself now appears to us as simply a macroscopic and statistical view of phenomena.
McGilchrist, via de Broglie, positions quantum field theory as ontologically deeper than relativity, establishing it as the most adequate description of physical — and by extension psychological — reality.
, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021thesis
quantum theories penetrate into more profound strata of reality than all previous theories. The theory of relativity itself now appears to us as simply a macroscopic and statistical view of phenomena.
McGilchrist, via de Broglie, positions quantum field theory as ontologically deeper than relativity, establishing it as the most adequate description of physical — and by extension psychological — reality.
, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021thesis
The field quantum ‘lives a life and dies a death of its own’ … ‘An electron is nothing like, say, a tiny pea. An electron is simply an energy increment of a spread-out matter field.’
McGilchrist deploys the quantum field concept to displace particle-based materialism in favour of a process ontology in which discrete quanta are secondary expressions of continuous fields.
, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting
The field quantum ‘lives a life and dies a death of its own’ … ‘An electron is nothing like, say, a tiny pea. An electron is simply an energy increment of a spread-out matter field.’
McGilchrist deploys the quantum field concept to displace particle-based materialism in favour of a process ontology in which discrete quanta are secondary expressions of continuous fields.
, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting
quantum mechanics may be regarded as the rational generalisation of classical physics, and complementarity as the generalisation of causality in the narrower sense.
Pauli articulates quantum mechanics as the systematic extension of classical causality, with complementarity redefining the observer-system relationship at a foundational epistemological level.
, Writings on Physics and Philosophy, 1994thesis
You can very well compare the situation to Jung’s thesis that behind our conscious thinking there is a realm of unconscious forms. If you have to describe the world by referring to an invisible, numinous realm of reality, you are leaving the realm of empirical science.
Ponte and Schäfer draw an explicit structural parallel between quantum virtual states and Jung’s unconscious forms, arguing both require positing an invisible, causally efficacious realm beyond empirical science.
, Carl Gustav Jung, Quantum Physics and the Spiritual Mind: A Mystical Vision of the Twenty-First Century, 2013supporting
the adoption of a quantum principle modifies this conception of corpuscular individuation and extends the conversion of the notion of the individual initiated i
Simondon employs quantum theory to reformulate physical individuation, arguing that the quantum principle integrates the complementary aspects of continuity and discontinuity within a single ontological framework.
, Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information, 2020supporting
the singular atomicity of action, which is the foundation of the theory of quanta, would be understood … The fundamental problem that wave mechanics poses for a theory of the physical individual is in fact the following: in the wave-corpuscle complex, how is the wave linked to the corpuscle?
Simondon identifies the wave-corpuscle duality as the central problem quantum theory poses for any theory of individuation, refusing to reduce it to Bohr’s complementarity and instead seeking a realist integration.
, Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information, 2020supporting
the fundamental fact of quantum mechanics that the interactions of the measuring instruments with the system observed remain partially indeterminable whenever the finiteness of
Pauli connects the epistemological situation of quantum measurement — the irreducible disturbance of the observed by the observer — with the comparable autonomy of the unconscious in psychological theory.
, Writings on Physics and Philosophy, 1994supporting
the idea of causality, criticised earlier from the empirical standpoint by D. Hume, has undergone a further essential generalisation in quantum mechanics.
Pauli traces a philosophical lineage from Humean empiricism to quantum mechanics, presenting the latter as the culmination of a centuries-long critique and generalisation of deterministic causality.
, Writings on Physics and Philosophy, 1994supporting
Nonlocality is … ‘an indelible feature of entanglement, and entanglement is an indelible feature of quantum mechanics.’ … Every part of the cosmos would be necessarily connected in some form to every other part.
McGilchrist interprets quantum nonlocality and entanglement as the physical foundation for a holistic cosmology in which universal interconnection is not metaphor but empirical fact.
, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting
the quantum phenomena corroborate Analytical Psychology in the sense that the invisible layer of reality is not only the source but also the goal of our human significance.
Ponte and Schäfer conclude that quantum physics validates the Jungian claim that an invisible, non-material dimension of reality is both the origin and the telos of human psychological life.
, Carl Gustav Jung, Quantum Physics and the Spiritual Mind: A Mystical Vision of the Twenty-First Century, 2013supporting
‘Deep down, the theory is not quantum. In systems such as the hydrogen atom, the processes described by the theory mould discreteness from underlying continuity.’
McGilchrist cites Tong to argue that quantum discreteness is secondary to continuous fields, aligning modern physics with a process metaphysics and against atomistic materialism.
, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting
I proposed to use the assumption of a nuclear spin to interpret the hyperfine-structure of spectral lines … proposed instead of it the assumption of a new quantum-theoretic property of the electron, which I called a ‘two-valuedness not describable classically’.
Pauli recounts his discovery of the exclusion principle and electron spin, illustrating how quantum theory demands properties for which no classical description exists — a paradigmatic instance of quantum ontological novelty.
, Writings on Physics and Philosophy, 1994supporting
it was Bohr who … worked out the epistemological consequences of the new quantum mechanics or wave mechanics, which since 1927 removed the logical contradictions from the theoretical explanation of the quantum phenomena.
Pauli credits Bohr’s complementarity principle as the resolution of quantum paradox, establishing the epistemological framework within which subsequent psyche-matter dialogue takes place.
, Writings on Physics and Philosophy, 1994supporting
Quantum computing, according to Deutsch, ‘would be capable of distributing components of a complex task among vast numbers of parallel universes, and then sharing the results.’
Strassman speculatively invokes quantum computing as a possible mechanism by which DMT-altered brain function might access parallel universes, treating quantum theory as a framework for altered-state phenomenology.
, DMT: The Spirit Molecule: A Doctor’s Revolutionary Research into the Biology of Near-Death and Mystical Experiences, 2001aside
Quantum computing, according to Deutsch, ‘would be capable of distributing components of a complex task among vast numbers of parallel universes, and then sharing the results.’
Strassman speculatively invokes quantum computing as a possible mechanism by which DMT-altered brain function might access parallel universes, treating quantum theory as a framework for altered-state phenomenology.
, DMT: The Spirit Molecule, 2001aside
more recent research even demonstrates quantum entanglement between particles in two wholly distinct (as
McGilchrist notes the demonstration of quantum entanglement in biological systems as evidence that quantum phenomena are not confined to the subatomic realm but permeate living matter.
, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021aside
if quantum mechanics is supposed to be the best case of ontological emergence, then it would seem a realist interpretation of quantum mechanics is being assumed. Whether there is a coherent realist interpretation of quantum mechanics is an unresolved matter.
Thompson flags the unresolved problem of realist interpretation in quantum mechanics as a constraint on its use as a model for ontological emergence in biological and phenomenological theory.
, Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind, 2007aside