Van Eenwyk (1997, p. 66) offers an interesting metaphor in his portrayal of the framing nature of the Jungian archetype and its relationship to attractors and fractals. He brings in the olfactory neurons and the nature of odors:
“. . .rather than there being a separate neuron for each odor, which automatically alerts the cortex to the presence of its signature smell, neurons cooperate together to generate a pattern which itself comprises the recognition factor of the olfactory apparatus.
This means that brains are not hard-wired into neural pathways, each of which handles a specific function. If that were true, one would need only to find a specific neural pathway to explain the brain’s activity regarding any particular function. But ‘an act of perception is not the copying of an incoming stimulus,’ says Freeman. Rather, ‘it is a step in a trajectory by which brains grow, reorganize themselves and reach into their environment to change it to their own advantage.’ All of which is accomplished through fractal attractors, “the behavior the system settles into when it is held under the influence of a particular input.”
Van Eeenwyk is hovering on the edge of what might be considered a hologram-based model of cortical functioning.
Holograms: given Van Eenwyk’s portrayal of cortical functioning, I would introduce the model of brains as a hologram. This model offers yet another parallel between Jung’s archetype and dynamic operations of the human brain. Specifically, the hologram suggests that all information in a system is present in each unit of the system. Karl Pribram (Hampden-Turner, 1981, pp. 94-97), for instance, offers a holographic portrayal of the human brain in which memories are stored in three-dimensional space—allowing retrieval to occur at any point in the brain. A clarifying analogy is offered in describing how our brain might operate like a hologram (Hampden-Turner, 1981, p. 97):
“If two stones are dropped into a pan of water and the surface is quick frozen, the two sets of concentric ripples form an interference pattern. If a laser light is shone through the ice, a holographic image of the two stones is recreated. The images of the stones are encoded in every part of the rippled ice and can be created from as little as a square centimetre.”
We might similarly portray archetypes as three-dimensional framing functions that enable diverse images, memories and thoughts to be immediately organized at any one point in time around a specific archetypal theme. This theme, like ripples formed in the water, influences the entire psyche. An external event, like the two pebbles tossed into the water, precipitates archetypal “ripples” in the psyche.
This notion of archetype as a framing and organizing function, rather than being a specific character or event, is particularly important when considering nothingness or the Void as an archetype. Obviously, there is no specific character or event in nothingness; however, nothingness and the void, as a strange attractor, can draw in specific characters and events, leaving the human psyche with the fearful absence of anything.
I recently read an account of this dynamic found in the life and mind of a specific person portrayed in the widely read novel called Mona’s Eyes (Schlesser, 2025). While this book is primarily concerned with a child (Mona) and her grandfather’s view of artwork in Paris museums, there is also a subtheme about the mysterious death of Mona’s grandmother. Thomas Schlesser (2025, p. 178) writes about Mona’s reflections on her grandmother’s death:
“Mona hadn’t understood this absence [grandmother’s death] at the time; it must have seemed like an unfathomable mystery because no one had been able to explain to her what ceasing to exist meant, when she was barely beginning her own existence. Moving forward in life means making the grueling effort to bring out into the light the wounds that we hadn’t seen coming, and that, by their very surreptitiousness, traumatize us to the depths of our being.”
