The Order-Disorder Paradox: Understanding the Hidden Side of Change in Self and Society

Nathan Schwartz-Salant

Apr 2017 · North Atlantic Books

About this eBook

Increasing order in a system also creates disorder: this seemingly paradoxical idea has deep roots in early cultures throughout the world, but it has been largely lost in our modern lives as we push for increasing systematization in our world and in our personal lives. Drawing on nearly five decades of research as well as forty-five years working as a psychoanalyst, Nathan Schwartz-Salant explains that, in a world where vast amounts of order are being created through the growing success of science and technology, the concomitant disorder is having devastating effects upon relationships, society, and the environment. As a Jungian analyst with training in the physical sciences, Schwartz-Salant is uniquely qualified to explore scientific conceptions of energy, information, and entropy alongside their mythical antecedents. He analyzes the possible effects of created disorder, including its negative consequences for the creator of the preceding order as well as its potentially transformative functions. With many examples of the interaction of order and disorder in everyday life and psychotherapy, The Order-Disorder Paradox makes new inroads into our understanding of the wide-ranging consequences of the order we create and its effects on others and the environment.

About the author

Trained in Jungian psychology at the C. G. Jung Institute in Zürich, Switzerland, Nathan Schwartz-Salant has been a psychoanalyst in private practice since 1968. He is the author of several books on Jungian analysis, including Narcissism and Character Transformation and The Mystery of Human Relationship: Alchemy and the Transformation of the Self.