Within the depth-psychology corpus, 'structure' operates across at least three distinct registers that frequently intersect. In the psychoanalytic-developmental tradition, most forcefully articulated by Schore, structure denotes the hierarchically organized, experience-dependent formations of the psyche — neural and psychological scaffoldings that emerge from object-relational exchanges and constrain earlier, more primitive functions. For Flores, drawing on self-psychology, 'structure building' designates the intrapsychic consequence of adequate selfobject responsiveness; without it, the self remains architecturally deficient, prone to the substitutions that characterize addiction. Jung's own corpus treats structure at two levels: the biological-hierarchical architecture of the psyche (The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche) and the quaternary or mandala-like 'basic fourfold structure' of which von Franz speaks — a primordial organizing schema that gradually differentiates as consciousness develops. Turner, by contrast, deploys structure sociologically and ritually, opposing it to liminality and communitas; his 'anti-structure' names precisely what escapes or subverts organized social positions. Hillman invokes structure aesthetically, noting Jung's claim that the dream possesses a 'dramatic structure' akin to theater. Harrison reads social structure as the matrix from which religious projection proceeds, and Thompson, reading Merleau-Ponty, situates structure as the emergent form that neither reduces to components nor floats free of them. Across these voices a persistent tension emerges: structure as consolidating achievement versus structure as constraint on living process — a polarity that animates depth psychology's ongoing negotiation between form and transformation.
In the library
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structure becomes 'increasingly complex and hierarchical, with every step in growth and complexity bringing about a further subordination and constraint of earlier structure and functions and the emergence of new functions'
Schore, drawing on Wright and Hughlings Jackson, argues that psychological structure formation is a developmental, hierarchical process in which each new level subordinates and constrains prior structures while generating genuinely new capacities.
Schore, Allan N., Affect Regulation and the Origin of the Self: The Neurobiology of Emotional Development, 1994thesis
It is within the matrix of environmental responsiveness and emotional attunement that a specific process of psychological structure formation develops. Structure building cannot occur without a previous stage in which the child's mirroring, twinship, and idealizing needs have been responded to efficiently.
Flores locates psychological structure formation squarely within the selfobject matrix, insisting that intrapsychic architecture depends on the quality of early relational attunement — a premise with direct implications for treating addictive pathology.
Flores, Philip J., Addiction as an Attachment Disorder, 2004thesis
Turner's central theoretical project opposes 'structure' — the differentiated, hierarchical organization of social positions — to 'anti-structure' (communitas and liminality), establishing the dialectic that defines his ritual theory.
Victor Turner, Victor Witter Turner, The Ritual Process Structure and Anti-Structure, 1966thesis
If then social structure has this fundamental and deeply seated character, if it is the least easily changed and only changed as the result either of actual blending of peoples or of the most
Harrison, citing Rivers, argues that social structure is the most resistant and foundational dimension of human collective life, and that mythological and religious projections — including the Olympian pantheon — must be read as expressions of underlying social-structural realities.
Harrison, Jane Ellen, Themis: A Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion, 1912thesis
the basic fourfold structure of the psyche, which means more than only the conscious functions, is generally represented, if it appears, as a purely primitive self-manifestation of the unconscious, usually as an undifferentiated quaternion.
Von Franz identifies the 'basic fourfold structure' of the psyche as an a priori organizing schema of the unconscious that progressively differentiates as consciousness develops, linking structural psychology to the symbolic problem of three and four.
von Franz, Marie-Louise, Psychotherapy, 1993thesis
What I am calling dynamic co-emergence is the sort of emergence that best describes what Merleau-Ponty means by form, namely, a whole that cannot be dislocated from its components but cannot be reduced to them either.
Thompson translates Merleau-Ponty's concept of 'form' into the language of dynamic co-emergence, treating structure as a whole irreducible to its parts — a position that challenges both reductive and inflationary accounts of mind.
Thompson, Evan, Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind, 2007supporting
Jung pointed to Dionysos also by stating that the dream had a dramatic structure. Dionysos is the god of theater: the word tragedy means his 'goat song.'
Hillman foregrounds Jung's claim that the dream possesses an inherent dramatic structure, linking this formal insight to Dionysian mythology and suggesting that structure in the psyche is always already theatrical and transformative.
Jung's own title signals his fundamental commitment to treating the psyche in both structural and dynamic terms simultaneously — architecture and energetics as inseparable aspects of psychological reality.
Jung, Carl Gustav, The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, 1960supporting
The surface structure of a sentence consists of the relationships between the particular words and phrases, and the deep structure is the fundamental, underlying meaning
James's introduction of Chomsky's surface/deep structure distinction into psychological discourse prefigures the depth-psychological concern with latent versus manifest levels of meaning.
James, William, The Principles of Psychology, 1890supporting
What is particularly striking about the Vice Lords and such other gangs as the Egyptian Cobras and the Imperial Chaplains is the complex and hierarchical nature of their organization.
Turner illustrates how social structure — even in liminal or marginal groups — reasserts itself through complex hierarchical organization, demonstrating the persistence of structural logic even in anti-structural settings.
Victor Turner, Victor Witter Turner, The Ritual Process Structure and Anti-Structure, 1966supporting
individuation takes place in a quantum manner through abrupt leaps, each plateau of individuation being capable of once again relating itself to the following as a pre-individual state of the being
Simondon frames psychic structure not as a stable endpoint but as a provisional plateau in an ongoing individuation process, challenging any static conception of psychological organization.
Simondon, Gilbert, Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information, 2020supporting
the correlational structure of intentionality belongs to what Husserl called static phenomenology... a genetic phenomenology, that is, a phenomenology whose point of departure is not the explicit correlational structure of intentional act (noesis) and intentional object (noema), but rather the genesis of intentional experience in time.
Thompson distinguishes static from genetic phenomenology, showing that the correlational structure of intentionality must ultimately be grounded in a developmental account of embodied temporal experience.
Thompson, Evan, Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind, 2007supporting
GEOMETRIC STRUCTURE AND POLITICAL IDEAS IN THE COSMOLOGY OF ANAXIMANDER
Vernant traces the homology between geometric structural concepts and political ideas in early Greek cosmology, suggesting that abstract structural thinking and social organization are mutually constitutive.
Vernant, Jean-Pierre, Myth and Thought Among the Greeks, 1983aside