A similar deconstruction of certainty occurred in quantum mechanics. In 1927 and 1928, just years before Pluto's discovery, the pioneering efforts of the scientists exploring quantum physics reached its zenith (or more appropriately its deepest archeological nadir) with the synthesis of Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, Bohr's notion of complementarity, and Schrodinger's wave function, all comprising the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics. This same group of eminent scientists stated with assurance that there is no deep reality, that the world of our senses rest on an undefined "something" which is radically divergent from the constitution of the tangible world.

As the world of exterior reality was plumbed to its depths, so to would depth psychologists working at this time excavate the deepest levels of inner space. The psychological idiom that "we are not the master in our own house"—that the ego lay atop a vast unconscious which contained our highest and lowest potentials—was gaining theoretical support by the pioneering efforts of Freud, Jung, and other researchers of early depth psychologies. Equally as important, psychotherapy itself would dramatically rise in popularity in Europe and, in particular, the United States. The taboo restrictions against this "cure for the Age of Anxiety" would loosen in the more cosmopolitan and intellectual circles of the United States, and the number of analysts and patients rose considerably.

The synchronous events correlating with the discovery of Pluto were not restricted to the musings of affluent intelligentsias but had repercussions that affected all levels of society. The U.S. stock market crash of 1929 and the subsequent economic depression were of a severity that could not have been predicted by logical analysis alone; very few economic indicators prior to the crash pointed to an economic catastrophe of this degree. The laissez-faire approach to economic theory and policy had been severely challenged by the Great Depression, and classical models that suggested that economies were self-correcting did not correlate with the reality of the situation.