Van Eenwyck seems to be suggesting that consciousness only exists or is viable in a world “that behaves itself” by offering continuing, consistency, patterns and many fractals. This suggests that successful anticipation typically assumes a close system with locked in variables. However, anticipation can be an open system in which new variables enter the picture and change their value and relationship with other variables. The world is filled with variable, uncertain, complex, ambiguous, turbulent and contradictor conditions (VUCA-Plus) (Bergquist, 2026a). At every turn there is a surprise. It may be thrilling, but it also requires accommodation. Furthermore, it requires a full incorporation of Polystasis. Things don’t just return to their previous form and stasis (homeostasis).
To return to the perspective of the Ego psychologists, we might consider the Id to be operating in the primordial condition of “blooming, buzzing confusion,” while the Super-Ego, as a counter to the Id, is operating in a similar state of highly emotional (blooming and buzzing) non-reasoning. It is the Ego that not only tempers and directs the emotionally laded impulses of the Id and Super-ego but also provides adaptive guidance through the detection of patterns and discovery (or invention) of meaning. The challenge to the Ego is great in mid-21st Century life, given the VUCA-Plus conditions.
While the Id knows nothing about good and evil, and the Super-ego firmly differentiates between good and evil, the Ego can bring the two together, in large part because it identifies important cause-and-effect patterns. We anticipate good coupled with bad: “It will be hard, but good for me.” We can also identify the good that is hidden behind the bad: “what she did seems to be bad; however, there was a good reason for her to do what she did.” It is with anticipation of patterned cause-and-effects that we are able not only make sense of the world, but also act in a reasonable, ethical manner.
In our Ego-based making sense of our world, we encounter a variety of circumstances that require flexible, adaptive anticipation. For instance, sometimes, we will anticipate nothingness. This can be a “bad” thing if we were hoping that something would occur. “Nothing has occurred and I am discouraged.” At other times, “nothing” is a good thing, such as when a wound has healed and is no longer “there”. We take medication to reduce fear, eliminate pain, or reduce swelling. The medication has been successful. There is now “nothing” in terms of an unhealthy bodily condition.
At other times, anticipation brings something to consciousness that had been neglected or denied. We might have declared that there is “nothing” there with regard to fear, hope, or bias. However, we soon find that our anticipations are no longer accurate. We make the wrong move. The reaction of other people to our behavior is surprising. Our expectations (baseline) end up being way out of line. We suddenly must look deeper into our intra-psychic operations. We discover that we have been “covering over” an important feature of our environment because we are afraid of this feature or don’t understand how it operates. We are making assumptions about the other person’s thoughts and feelings that are false. Our “theory of mind” about this person is laced with images of our father’s unforgiving attitudes about potential failures. While we might benefit from a few sessions on the psychoanalyst’s couch, we can also gain important insights into our inner life by reflecting on the accuracy of our anticipations.
One final point about the operation of anticipations. To make this point, I bring in the analyses to be conducted by those offering a system dynamics perspective. There are important dynamics operating in the polystatic processes of anticipation that concern valence and delay. First, we must acknowledge that our anticipations are often not quite timely, even though they are quickly made. There are often at least short delays in our recognition of a shift in the environment. This is where the matter of Valence comes in.
