The vortex appears in the depth-psychology corpus not as a mere physical curiosity but as a structurally significant emblem of how contrary forces generate ordered complexity from turbulence. McGilchrist, who provides the most sustained treatment, deploys the vortex as a natural-philosophical archetype: a structure that holds opposites in dynamic tension — cold and hot, downward and upward motion — and whose contrary rotations are generative rather than destructive. For McGilchrist, the vortex illustrates how resistance and obstruction within a flow produce beauty and emergent form, a principle he maps directly onto the creative asymmetry between hemispheric modes of cognition. The figure resonates with older strata of the corpus as well: Jung's alchemical commentary identifies the 'mystery of the whirlwind in the manner of a wheel' as an ancient cipher for the circulatory opus — the self-transforming rotation of the arcane substance — while Bloom reads Hart Crane's literary vortex as a trope for poetic agon, situating it within an intertextual field of Shelley, Whitman, and Eliot. A bibliographic citation in Ogden points to Llinás's neuroscientific monograph 'I of the Vortex,' suggesting the figure has migrated from fluid dynamics into theories of self-organisation and consciousness. Taken together, these usages converge on the vortex as a master metaphor for the psyche's own spiralling, self-perpetuating motion: never static, never simply destructive, always productive of novel order from the interplay of opposing currents.
In the library
11 passages
A tornado is a typical vortex: it contains contrary motions, cold air pushing down on the outside and hot air spiralling up on the inside. Vortices of all kinds both arise from and perpetuate such contrary motions.
McGilchrist establishes the vortex as a structural archetype of nature, arguing that its contrary internal motions are generative and ubiquitous, providing the physical substrate for his broader claim that opposition produces life and complexity.
McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021thesis
A tornado is a typical vortex: it contains contrary motions, cold air pushing down on the outside and hot air spiralling up on the inside. Vortices of all kinds both arise from and perpetuate such contrary motions.
Duplicate edition passage confirming the same thesis: contrary motions within the vortex are the very engine of its persistence and power in nature.
McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021thesis
the idea of the circulatory opus, or rotating arcane substance, finds expression as early as Komarios, who speaks of the 'mystery of the whirlwind in the manner of a wheel'
Jung traces the vortex-as-whirlwind to ancient alchemical sources, framing it as a pre-figuration of the circulatory opus — the self-transforming rotation at the core of the individuation process.
Jung, Carl Gustav, Psychology and Alchemy, 1944thesis
Crane's vortex plays against the one created by the Pequod as it sinks and the whirlpool in the Death by Water section of The Waste Land.
Bloom reads Crane's literary vortex as a site of intertextual poetic agon, placing it in an American sublime tradition where the spiral figure encodes both destruction and creative usurpation of prior voices.
Bloom, Harold, The Daemon Knows: Literary Greatness and the American Sublime, 2015thesis
Fig. 40 Vortex in water … Fig. 44 Vortices in stream caused by uniform perpendicular obstruction … Fig. 51 Vortices and contrary motion
McGilchrist's figure list documents an extended visual argument showing vortices arising from obstruction and embodying contrary motion, illustrating his philosophical thesis with empirical natural phenomena.
McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting
Fig. 40 Vortex in water … Fig. 44 Vortices in stream caused by uniform perpendicular obstruction … Fig. 51 Vortices and contrary motion
Duplicate edition: same visual catalogue reinforcing that the vortex phenomenon is central to McGilchrist's argument about creative resistance and contrary motion in nature.
McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting
No obstruction in the path of a flow is required for it to become turbulent; any inequality in speed or viscosity within the flow itself can lead to turbulence.
McGilchrist argues that turbulence — the generative context for vortex formation — arises intrinsically from flow itself, not merely from external obstruction, deepening the philosophical claim about creativity born from internal opposition.
McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting
No obstruction in the path of a flow is required for it to become turbulent; any inequality in speed or viscosity within the flow itself can lead to turbulence.
Duplicate edition passage affirming that internal inequality within flow suffices to generate turbulence, framing the vortex as arising from immanent tension rather than purely external resistance.
McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting
Llinas, R. (2001). I of the vortex: From neurons to self. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
A bibliographic citation in Ogden's clinical text registers the vortex as a neuroscientific metaphor for self-organisation, indicating the term's migration from physics into theories of consciousness and somatic psychotherapy.
Ogden, Pat, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Interventions for Trauma and, 2015aside
Curvature, as I have suggested, is more characteristic of the intellectual world of the right hemisphere, in which opposites can be reconciled, in which the direct approach may for many purposes be inferior to the indirec
McGilchrist's discussion of curvilinear motion provides the broader hemispheric-philosophical context within which the vortex acquires its significance as an emblem of right-hemisphere cognition and the reconciliation of opposites.
McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021aside
Curvature, as I have suggested, is more characteristic of the intellectual world of the right hemisphere, in which opposites can be reconciled
Duplicate edition: curvature and rhythmic cycles are positioned as the right-hemisphere correlates of vortical motion, underscoring the psycho-philosophical import of spiral form.
McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021aside