O inconsciente na perspectiva da complexidade e do caos: uma abordagem inicial

Abstract

This paper is associated to the discussions of the SPPA - Study Group on Psychoanalytic Epistemology. Its main objective is to present an initial approach to the viewing of the mind’s functioning and, above all, of the unconscious, as from the perspective of Complexity and Chaos Theory, fundamental ideas of the present scientific thought. It begins by presenting some notions about deterministic chaotic systems such as the sensibility towards the early conditions, and the tendency to organize and form patterns, the fractal scales that, although unpredictable, can retrospectively be recognized. Further on it discusses some relations between these subjects and the unconscious, emphasizing how Psychoanalysis anticipated some basic principles of today’s scientific thought, mainly when Freud introduces the notion of the unconscious, with its own laws, in constant relation to the conscious. The unconscious emerges like a system that presents an unstable behavior, not periodic, and highly complex, from which certain structures organize themselves like a fragmentary scale. There are outstanding contributions by Bion and Matte-Blanco that help understanding the unconscious as well as the idea that this concept keeps up its mystery.