The Self and the Holomovement: C. G. Jung’s Self Archetype and David Bohm’s Holomovement as an Alternative Worldview

Abstract

According to James Sire, a worldview is based on a set of presuppositions about the nature of the world, the universe, and our place in it. C. G. Jung and physicist David Bohm both argued that one of the primary problems facing individuals today arises from the mechanistic, materialistic worldview currently permeating the collective in modern society because this worldview excludes the human experience of deep life meaning. This dissertation brings Jung’s theory of the Self archetype into a dialogue with Bohm’s theory of the holomovement to develop the framework of an alternative holistic worldview. Such a worldview, I argue, can give a new form to what Jung called the “God-image” and has the potential to fulfill the “religious instinct for wholeness,” as Jung put it, which is the human desire for meaning, purpose, and spiritual fulfillment. It might, therefore, be significant for supporting the process of psychological development that Jung called individuation. The dissertation employs a hermeneutic methodology in conducting a comparative theoretical analysis of the theories of Jung and Bohm. The analysis is augmented visually by systematically developing a series of mandala images depicting the analogous tenets in the theories of Jung and Bohm; the four functions of thinking, feeling, intuition, and sensation as a participatory epistemology; and the contrasts between the mechanistic and holistic worldviews.