• turning point. Fritjof Capra, in his seminal work “The turning point. Science, society and the rising culture” (1982) proposed the following thesis: the paradigm change in physics produce paradigm change in the rest of the sciences. As a corollary to this thesis is the basic idea of professor Daniela Sorea‘s book – “From Freud to Jung. A paradigm shift” [in the original: “De la Freud la Jung. O schimbare de paradigmă” (2019)] – namely: the paradigm shift in physics produced the paradigm shift in psychology. Starting from here, it could be further stated that, on the one hand, i) the transition took place from classical physics to modern physics; and, on the other hand, ii) the same transition took place from Freud’s psychoanalysis to Jung’s analytical psychology. Therefore, Daniela Sorea, in her book, presented a structure that is easy to follow and read: 1) first she talked about the symbol (starting from the reading of Peirce and de Saussure – see chapter 1); 2) then, she draw a parallel between Freud and Jung (considering the biography of the two titans, their ideational systems, as well as the consequences that are visible from this parallel – see chapter 2, [and Image 1 for a review of Jung’s ideational system]); 3) finally, in the 3^rd chapter, she presented the paradigms (offering a Kuhnian definition and dynamics, as well as how they have influenced the modern physics and the Jungian thought)
• symbol. The first chapter of Sorea’s book started from the assumption that like the Freudian conception, the Jungian conception  is about symbols. See Image 2a. For, it is well known that the conceptions of the two titans – Freud and Jung – have been interpreted from at least four perspectives: 1) as being about instincts, 2) as being about rules, 3) as being about symbols and 4) as being about Ideas (Knox, 2003: 23 fp). This assumption is at the basis of two other axioms presented by the author – Daniela Sorea – right from the beginning: i) the axiom of pansemy (=everything is a sign) and ii) the axiom of polysemy (=every sign has multiple meanings). At the foundation of this assumption is the postmodern vision of the world: if modernism studies the relationship between object & concept, then postmodernism studies the relationship between concept & word (and, going by this logic, it can be considered that, hypothetically, apart from modernism and postmodernism, there is at least another vision, a vision through which the relationship between words & objects is studied – see image 2b)
• paradigm. In the 3^rd chapter of her book, Daniela Sorea discussed the paradigm concept. However, the paradigm was defined not only by Thomas Kuhn (a viewpoint embraced by her book) – and it seems that there are at least 21 different definitions for the concept of paradigm in the Kuhnian sense [see: “The structure of scientific revolution” (1962)] according to Margaret Masterman’s chapter: “The nature of a paradigm” (1965) – but also by many other authors and, only for the narrow field of sociology, at least two works can be mentioned – for instance: Gibson Burrell & Gareth Morgan’s “Sociological paradigms and organizational analysis” (1979) or George Ritzer’s “Sociology. A multiple paradigm science” (1975). The mentioned authors have different definitions of the paradigm concept, different even from those proposed by Thomas Kuhn. And even if a solution could be found to this explosion of definitions, Fritjof Capra still produced a particular epistemological error: Freud and Jung were already dead when Thomas Kuhn was writing at his book about paradigms: therefore, both Freud and Jung have presented their visions in a special way; but, later and in retrospect, physics researchers claimed that Freud and Jung also have had in mind, when they have written their papers, the debates in physics and, based on these debates, they have created their systems – which is false.

Image 1:

Image 2:

Resources:

• Daniela Sorea (2019): “De la Freud la Jung. O schimbare de paradigmă”, Presa Universitară Clujeană
• Gibson Burrell & Gareth Morgan (1979): “Sociological paradigms and organisational analysis. Elements of the sociology of corporate life”, Heinemann
• Fritjof Capra (1982): „The turning point. Science, society and the rising culture”, Wildwood House
• Jean Knox (2003): “Archetype, attachment, analysis. Jungian psychology and the emergent mind”, Brunner-Routledge, a Taylor & Francis Group
• Thomas Kuhn (1962): “The structure of scientific revolutions”, The University of Chicago Press
• Charles Kay Ogden & Ivor Armstrong Richards (1946): “The meaning of meaning”, Harvest Book
• Margaret Masterman (1965): “The nature of a paradigm” in Imre Lakatos & Alan Musgrave (eds): “Criticism of the growth of knowledge. Proceedings of the 1965 international colloquim in the philosophy of science”, Cambridge University Press, pp. 231-278
• George Ritzer (1975): “Sociology. A multiple paradigm science”, Allyn and Bacon, INC