The Beginning

Somehow, slowly, psyche came into being. The wind swept off the grass, the creatures came out of the sea, civilization took hold, and a dichotomy emerged. No longer was matter the sole phenomenon on planet earth. As humans began to observe and reflect, matter, astoundingly, developed another aspect. From the tree came the thought-of tree. From water came thought-of water. Now things existed in two places: on Earth, and in psyche.

It is not enough to say that the tree reflected in the psyche is "only" in one's mind. It is not enough to say these things are "just" imagination. They have a life of their own, and they belong, irrefutably, to a grand and miraculous world. The objects in the psyche do not, however, correspond precisely to those in matter, for we can easily concoct imaginary objects which will never be reflected in matter. We can also, for that matter, imagine a tree growing instantly in a psyche, whereas the same process would take years on Earth. In other words, psychic material does not adhere to the same laws that govern matter. It is the object of this (paper) to explore the laws and patterns that do govern the psyche.

In my experience, there are two primary principles at work in the psyche. One is rhythm, the other is energy. By rhythm I mean the quality of psychic experience that gives the ego an experience of repitition, even predictability. A good way to imagine this is to think of an experience in one's own life that "keeps coming up." When the lifetime is examined from a distance, one can see the "rhythmic" nature of this theme - and perhaps even hypothesize a series of "waves" as the psychic illustration of this experience.

Energy, in the psychic sense, has proven to be a difficult thing to conceptualize. The position that psychic energy mimicks the patterns of energy on Earth (i.e. energy which is classified, broadly speaking, as matter, perhaps without even being tangible, or even sense-perceptible. The key difference being that it exists "outside" of the psyche - electromagnetic fields are just one example) cannot be maintained seriously. Some have theorized a "flow" model in which psychic energy, roughly, "travels" from place A to place B, and back again. Others have theorized a "final" viewpoint in which the "energy" is already in place, and simply moves like ripples in water. For the purposes of this paper, we need not settle on one or the other model. We need not even agree that psychic material is even composed of "energy" in the conventional sense of the term. We must only agree that the psyche has dynamic qualities, and that it is characterized, most notably, by movement.

But in order to dive further into our inquiry, we must first address the question of the unconscious. As the poast 110 years of psychological science has proven, our ego-consciousness occupies a much smaller spectrum of psychic activity than previously thought. (To be continued...)