Meeting on a Bridge: Hermeneutic Dialog With Jungian Psychology and Process-Oriented Psychology

Abstract

This research through a dialog between Jungian psychology and process-oriented psychology explicates connections between psychology and physics in order to elucidate the relationship between psychic contents and the nature of health and well-being, as well as the relationship between nonmaterial processes and their empirical manifestations. The study applies the hermeneutic methodology supplemented by alchemical hermeneutics. As “research with soul in mind” (Romanyshyn, 2007), this work illustrates how the transference field between the researcher and the topic constitutes dynamics influencing the process of the research, the formulation of the research questions, and ultimately, what is revealed through the work. The deep subjectivity, unconscious dynamics, and transparency of the researcher are companions in this research process, supporting the claim that through deep subjectivity an objective science is practiced. Further, this work focuses on the hermeneutic readings of the texts related to the Jungian theory of complexes and the Processwork symptom theory, Jung’s notion of psychoid archetype and synchronicity and Mindell’s dreaming process and his work on nonlocality and other concepts from physics. The hermeneutic readings of these texts lead to a new understanding and theory regarding the nature of psychological processes and offer re-visioning the ontology and epistemology of the current natural sciences paradigm.