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the syndetic paradigm
the untrodden path beyond freud and jung

Description

A new theoretical paradigm that goes beyond the limitations of the Freudian and Jungian psychological models

As I brought the newly created theoretical whole of my first book C. G. Jung’s Psychology of Religion and Synchronicity precisely to bear on Jung’s theoretical and clinical model, I found myself being carried into territory I did not anticipate entering. Firstly, it became apparent to me exactly why Jungian psychology had from the beginning failed to accommodate the synchronicity theory and its implications. Secondly, it became apparent to me that the very theoretical limitations that had obstructed the further development of the synchronicity concept by Jungians were no less obstructing the advancement of the Jungian theoretical model in its entirety. Although, therefore, this, my most recent work, certainly could be conceived of as an extension of my first book, that extension necessarily proceeds by way of that which is the most thorough criticism of the Jungian theoretical model to date. The Jungian Paradigm, it is carefully argued, not only is a deeply flawed theoretical model, but it is a model, moreover, that falls far short of that which it holds out to the world as its promise. I offer in its stead what I have termed the Syndetic Paradigm.

In contradistinction to the term synchronicity whose etymology and Jungian usage relate to the idea of connectedness through time, the etymology of the term syndetic — Greek syndetikos from syndetos from syndein — simply denotes a state of being bound together. The Syndetic Paradigm, in this regard, holds that all of life, that is to say, nature in its entirety is bound together in a highly complex whole through an on-going process of spontaneous self-organization. In contrast, then, to the core assumptions of the Jungian Paradigm, with the Syndetic Paradigm, we take the critical theoretical step of moving from a closed-system model of a self-regulatory psyche to an open-system model of a psyche in a self-organizing totality. The Syndetic Paradigm, in this regard, holds that all of life is bound together in a highly complex whole through an on-going process of spontaneous self-organization. The new theoretical model that emerges in The Syndetic Paradigm: The Untrodden Path Beyond Freud and Jung, while taking up the fundamental psychological, ethical, spiritual, political and cultural concerns of the Freudian and Jungian Paradigms, conducts us to an experience of meaning that altogether exceeds their respective bounds.

State University of New York Press, February 2007, 336pp.
 

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