Synchronicity () is a concept introduced by Carl Jung, founder of analytical psychology, to describe events that coincide in time and appear meaningfully related, yet lack a discoverable causal connection. Jung held that this was a healthy function of the mind, although it can become harmful within psychosis.
Jung developed the theory as a hypothetical noncausal principle serving as the intersubjective or philosophically objective connection between these seemingly meaningful coincidences. After coining the term in the late 1920s Jung developed the concept with physicist Wolfgang Pauli through correspondence and in their 1952 work The Interpretation of Nature and the Psyche.Jung, Carl Gustav, and Wolfgang Ernst Pauli. 1955. The Interpretation of Nature and the Psyche, translated from German Naturerklärung und Psyche.Main, Roderick. 2000. "Religion, Science, and Synchronicity". Harvest: Journal for Jungian Studies 46(2):89–107. Archived from the original on 8 December 2006. This culminated in the Pauli–Jung conjecture.Beitman, Bernard D. 2009. "Coincidence Studies: A Freudian Perspective ". PsycCRITIQUES 55(49): Article 8. . .Jung, Carl G. 2005. "Synchronicity". Pp. 91–98 in Jung on Synchronicity and the Paranormal, edited by R. Main. London: Taylor & Francis. Jung and Pauli's view was that, just as causal connections can provide a meaningful understanding of the psyche and the world, so too may acausal connections.
A 2016 study found 70% of therapists agreed synchronicity experiences could be useful for therapy. Analytical psychologists hold that individuals must understand the compensatory meaning of these experiences to "enhance consciousness rather than merely build up superstitiousness". However, clients who disclose synchronicity experiences report not being listened to, accepted, or understood. The experience of overabundance of meaningful coincidences can be characteristic of schizophrenic delusion. Similar experiences not indicative of schizophrenia can result from intensive magical thinking driven by severe presentations of obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD).
Jung used synchronicity in arguing for the existence of the paranormal. This idea was explored by Arthur Koestler in The Roots of Coincidence and taken up by the New Age movement. Unlike magical thinking, which believes causally unrelated events to have paranormal causal connection, synchronicity supposes events may be causally unrelated yet have unknown noncausal connection.
The objection from a scientific standpoint is that this is neither testable nor falsifiable, so does not fall within empirical study. Scientific scepticism regards it as pseudoscience. Jung stated that synchronicity events are chance occurrences from a statistical point of view, but meaningful in that they may seem to validate paranormal ideas. No empirical studies of synchronicity based on observable mental states and scientific data were conducted by Jung to draw his conclusions, though studies have since been done . While someone may experience a coincidence as meaningful, this alone cannot prove objective meaning to the coincidence.
Statistical laws or probability, show how unexpected occurrences can be inevitable or more likely encountered than people assume. These explain coincidences such as synchronicity experiences as chance events which have been misinterpreted by confirmation biases, spurious correlations, or underestimated probability.Radford, Benjamin. 4 February 2014. "Synchronicity: Definition & Meaning". Live Science. Retrieved 25 June 2020.
Origins
Synchronicity arose with Jung's use of the ancient Chinese divination text I Ching. It has 64 hexagrams, each built from two trigrams or bagua. A divination is made by seemingly random numerical happenings for which the I Ching text gives detailed situational analysis. Richard Wilhelm, translator of Chinese, provided Jung with validation. Jung met Wilhelm in Darmstadt, Germany where Hermann von Keyserling hosted Gesellschaft für Freie Philosophie. In 1923 Wilhelm was in Zurich, as was Jung, attending the psychology club, where Wilhelm promulgated the I Ching. Finally,
Jung coined the term synchronicity as part of a lecture in May 1930, or as early as 1928, at first for use in discussing Chinese religious and philosophical concepts. His first public articulation of the term came in 1930 at the memorial address for Richard Wilhelm where Jung stated:
The I Ching is one of the five classics of Confucianism. By selecting a passage according to the traditional chance operations such as tossing coins and counting out yarrow stalks, the text is supposed to give insights into a person's inner states. Jung characterised this as the belief in synchronicity, and himself believed the text to give apt readings in his own experiences. He would later also recommend this practice to certain of his patients. Jung argued that synchronicity could be found diffused throughout Chinese philosophy more broadly and in various Taoist concepts. Jung also drew heavily from German philosophers Gottfried Leibniz, whose own exposure to I Ching divination in the 17th century was the primary precursor to the theory of synchronicity in the West, Arthur Schopenhauer, whom Jung placed alongside Leibniz as the two philosophers most influential to his formulation of the concept, and Johannes Kepler. He points to Schopenhauer, especially, as providing an early conception of synchronicity in the quote:
As with Paul Kammerer's theory of seriality developed in the late 1910s, Jung looked to hidden structures of nature for an explanation of coincidences. In 1932, physicist Wolfgang Pauli and Jung began what would become an extended correspondence in which they discussed and collaborated on various topics surrounding synchronicity, contemporary science, and what is now known as the Pauli effect. Jung also built heavily upon the idea of numinosity, a concept originating in the work of German religious scholar Rudolf Otto, which describes the feeling of gravitas found in religious experiences, and which perhaps brought greatest criticism upon Jung's theory. Jung also drew from parapsychologist J. B. Rhine whose work in the 1930s had at the time to validate certain claims about extrasensory perception. It was not until a 1951 Eranos conference lecture, after having gradually developed the concept for over two decades, that Jung gave his first major outline of synchronicity. The following year, Jung and Pauli published their 1952 work The Interpretation of Nature and the Psyche (), which contained Jung's central monograph on the subject, "Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle".
Other notable influences and precursors to synchronicity can be found in: the theological concept of correspondences,Wolfgang Pauli in letter to Jung 1950Brach, Jean-Pierre, and Wouter J. Hanegraaff. (2006). "Correspondences". In Dictionary of Gnosis & Western Esotericism, edited by Wouter Hanegraaff. sympathetic magic,Robert Todd Carroll, "sympathetic magic" in The Skeptic's Dictionary astrology,Marie-Louise von Franz, Man and His Symbols (1964), p. 227 and alchemy.
Pauli–Jung conjecture
The Pauli–Jung conjecture is a collaboration in metatheory between physicist Wolfgang Pauli and analytical psychologist Carl Jung, centered on the concept of . It was mainly developed between 1946 and 1954, four years before Pauli's death, and speculates on a perspective within the disciplines of both collaborators. Pauli additionally drew on various elements of quantum theory such as complementarity, nonlocality, and the observer effect in his contributions to the project. Jung and Pauli thereby "offered the radical [...] idea that the currency of these correlations is not (quantitative) statistics, as in quantum physics, but (qualitative) meaning".
Contemporary physicist T. Filk writes that quantum entanglement, being "a particular type of acausal quantum correlations", was plausibly taken by Pauli as "a model for the relationship between mind and matter in the framework [...] he proposed together with Jung". Specifically, quantum entanglement may be the physical phenomenon which most closely represents the concept of synchronicity.
Analytical psychology In analytical psychology, the recognition of seemingly-meaningful coincidences is a mechanism by which unconscious material is brought to the attention of the conscious mind. A harmful or developmental outcome can then result only from the individual's response to such material. Jung proposed that the concept could have psychiatric use in mitigating the negative effects of over-rationalisation and proclivities towards mind–body dualism.
Analytical psychology considers modern modes of thought to rest upon the pre-modern and primordial structures of the psyche. Causal connections thus form the basis of modern worldviews, and connections which lack causal reasoning are seen as . This chance-based interpretation, however, is incongruent with the primordial mind, which instead interprets this category as . The primordial framework in fact places emphasis on these connections, just as the modern framework emphasizes causal ones. In this regard, causality, like synchronicity, is a human interpretation imposed onto external phenomena. Primordial modes of thought are however, according to Jung, necessary constituents of the modern psyche that inevitably protrude into modern life—providing the basis for meaningful interpretation of the world by way of meaning-based connections. Just as the principles of psychological causality provide meaningful understanding of causal connections, so too the principle of synchronicity attempts to provide meaningful understanding of acausal connections. Jung placed synchronicity as one of three main conceptual elements in understanding the psyche:
, as understood in Freudian theory, by which repressed libidinal energy is discharged across the psyche in response to principles of cause and effect—though Jung broadened this to a more generalized mental energy that is "particular to the unfolding of the individual psyche" , by which self-actualisation is an element of the psyche as potential , or meaningful chance, by which the potential for self-actualisation is either enhanced or negated
Jung felt synchronicity to be a principle that had explanatory power towards his concepts of archetypes and the collective unconscious.Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious: Jung defines the 'collective unconscious' as akin to instincts. It described a governing dynamic which underlies the whole of human experience and history—social, emotional, psychological, and spiritual. The emergence of the synchronistic paradigm was a significant move away from Cartesian dualism towards an underlying philosophy of double-aspect theory. Some argue this shift was essential in bringing theoretical coherence to Jung's earlier work.Brown, R. S. 2014. "Evolving Attitudes". International Journal of Jungian Studies 6(3):243–53.In the final two pages of the Conclusion to Synchronicity, Jung states that not all coincidences are meaningful and further explains the creative causes of this phenomenon.
Philosophy of science
Jung held that there was both a philosophical and scientific basis for synchronicity. He identified the complementary nature of causality and acausality with Eastern sciences and protoscientific disciplines, stating "the East bases much of its science on this irregularity and considers coincidences as the reliable basis of the world rather than causality. Synchronism is the prejudice of the East; causality is the modern prejudice of the West" (see also: universal causation). Contemporary scholar L. K. Kerr writes: