Strange Attractors: Transference, Holography, and an Archetype

Burke, J. (2003). Strange Attractors: Transference, Holography, and an Archetype (Doctoral dissertation, Pacifica Graduate Institute, 2003).

There are similarities between the patterns of holography and of psychological transference, where holography is the process of recording and reconstructing holograms. Employing a theoretical perspective using a hermeneutic method, this dissertation parallels holography with transference, offering another way to encounter transference by showing similarities between the processes of each and the results of each. Though complex, infinitely varying, and unique, their patterns are clearly identifiable. Thus they are a metaphorical fit to the concept of strange attractors in physics and a more literal fit to the concept of archetypes in depth psychology or dynamic psychology, psychology which attends to the living, autonomous unconscious. This study explains how holography models transference, what a hologram is and how it works, and how depth psychology’s understanding of the interaction between consciousness and the unconscious is related to the hologram. It describes transference and related psychological processes as understood in six different schools of depth psychological thought. It shows that the underlying pattern or strange attraction between transference and holography extends to other processes both within and outside the field of psychology, processes such as projection, projective identification, splitting, memory, biology, creative discovery, theology, synchronicity, chaos, and nonlocality. By identifying the similar patterns of these processes, this study demonstrates the existence of an underlying holographic archetype in which essential qualities of the whole are present in each of the parts of the whole: the visual image of the overall hologram is present in each component part of the hologram, the autonomy of the overall human is present in each conscious and unconscious component part of the human psyche. By noting differences as well as similarities in these processes, it suggests an inventory of the qualities of the holographic archetype. This study furthers understanding of the pervasiveness, force, and autonomy of the unconscious acting through transference and projection by identifying a group projection of domestic violence lying at the core of the Christian myth. This study also furthers understanding of the concept of transference by providing a reflection hologram of the human psyche as an artistic work and as a visual metaphor of transference.