Synchronicity: An Acausal Connection to Explain Meaningful Coincidences
Many people today are familiar with the term “synchronicity.” The concept became popular in the 1980s in New Age books and thought. But for those of you who have never heard of it, “Synchronicity” is a term coined by Carl Jung. This was the eminent analyst who in the early XX century described “Complexes,” “Introversion” and “The Collective Unconscious.”
Jung used this term to define coincidences with extremely low statistical probability of occurring due to mere chance that had significant impact on people’s destinies.
Background
In the 1920s, Jung introduced his hypothesis of “meaningful coincidences.” He came up with this idea as a result of his personal experiences and the many stories he heard from his patients. In 1952, he gathered all the observations he had accumulated over the previous forty years and wrote a paper on this matter. He did it with the unofficial collaboration of the eminent physicist Wolfgang Pauli named ‘Synchronicity – An Acausal Connecting Principle.”
To put it succinctly, Jung–as most of us in our daily lives–had experienced strange coincidences that he could not explain. These numinous (strange) experiences got him puzzled. Being an open-minded scientist–and as result of an exchange of ideas he had with Albert Einstein regarding “relativity” —he thought there had to be a rational explanation for the occurrence of these strange coincidences.
Because these occurrences were so statistically improbable—and because they had meaning for him or his patients–he called them “Meaningful coincidences.” He coined this term and then went on to develop this concept further. He did it to discriminate these meaningful events from the much more common random coincidences that take place all the time as a result of chance.
Why this series on synchronicity
I myself have experienced in my own life a series of perplexing synchronic events. And interestingly enough, some of them happened early on in my life. These coincidences proved fateful for the course that my life would take in years to come and they defined a path I would not have fathomed before. But it is only in retrospect that we start connecting the dots and see how meaningful coincidences helped shape who we became in our lives later on.
The mechanics of meaningful coincidences
As a rule, the realization of the meaning of the coincidence comes after the fact, and not before. In fact, at times, this realization takes place many years after the first event in the chain of acausality took place. And the realization comes as a result of a second or third synchronistic event that gets our attention years later and which makes us reflect upon the entire chain of events. It is then that we find the personal meaning for the connections that appeared initially as “coincidences.”
Over thirty years of psychiatric practice, I have witnessed many instances of meaningful coincidences in the lives of other people and in my own patients as well. I have even noticed how important these coincidences were for them in determining the course of their lives. Some of them even included the way they found their way to starting treatment with me, which in some cases was life-saving for them.
The utility of looking into meaningful coincidences
Here then I am starting a series on synchronicity that will explore this fascinating matter from different angles. I will explain how these coincidences may take place and how they affect our lives. I will also look at synchronic events from the psychological perspective with an emphasis on the utility these meaningful coincidences may have for our lives.
These coincidences may help you to find the right person at the right moment, the love of your life when you least expect it, to make radical changes in your career path–and to gain insight into your Unconscious. If you pay attention to them, meaningful coincidences may help you estimate the direction in which your life is going. In the end, I will indicate how these coincidences may help you in determining the future course of events in your life and in promoting growth.
In future blogs I will advance different hypotheses to explain these phenomena. I will explore alternative scientific ways in which these phenomena may occur, and ways in which you can use meaningful coincidences to improve your life. One thing we do know is that these coincidences happen in the life of most people–even if we cannot comprehend them, explain them, or have way of proving them scientifically. In the course of this effort, I will try to stay within a rational perspective without going too far out into religious, occultist, or spiritualist speculations as Jung did in 1952.
Why looking at synchronicity now
It seems to me particularly important to revisit this notion of synchronic events at this point in history. This is so as–not only because they are significant in our own personal lives in the determination of our destinies–but because these phenomena matter for the understating of the Universe we live in. And this understanding has dramatically changed–and it continues to be revolutionized even more radically–by the new finds of post-Newtonian physics: “Relativity Theory” and “Quantum Mechanics.“
Since the beginning of the XXI century, very significant progress has been made in science. This is particularly true in the area of physics as a result of the advent of Quantum Mechanics.
Quantum mechanics is is the branch of physics that studies the behavior of particles at an atomic and subatomic level. This new worldview on matter opened by Quantum mechanics is not really new since it has been around since 1905. However, it is only now, 120 years later, in the third decade of the XXI century, that we are beginning to see the application of quantum phenomena in the cutting-edge areas of technology with the development of quantum computers by the Chinese, IBM, and Google.
Jung’s initial experiences with synchronistic phenomenon
In his paper On Synchronicity, Jung related the now classical story of a female patient of his who was excessively rationalistic (obsessive). She was rigid and excessive rational and was therefore unable to move past it and make any progress in her analysis.
In session, the patient told Jung of a strange dream she had had the night before. In her dream a rare golden scarab appeared and caught her attention. She was definitely puzzled by this vivid image of the golden scarab. This strange element in the dream piqued her curiosity and she wondered what it could mean.
Jung was sitting behind her by the window and–at the exact moment his patient was relating this dream to him–when he heard a tap on the window. He opened it–and to his surprise–it was a golden scarab, just like the one the patient described in the dream at that very same moment. He then proceeded to show it to the patient with the words, “Is this the scarab of your dreams?
At that moment, the overly-rational patient was shaken up. According to Jung, this meaningful coincidence caused a positive change in his patient that until that moment had been stuck in her analysis making no progress.
This synchronistic event helped Jung’s patient to break the armor of her obsessive rationality. This strange coincidence allowed her to consider other possibilities of being in the Universe. As a result of this odd experience, Jung’s patient came to grips with aspects of life she was unable to grasp before. This odd event that she could not explain rationally led her to open her mind to things she could have never considered before. She began thereafter to consider the irrational, the unexpected, and the contingent.
This realization—or “aha experience” caused by the coincidence–opened the realm of irrationality and the whole sphere of feelings and intuition for her. In this case, the “meaningful coincidence” had an immediate positive impact on the progress of her therapy–and from that moment on–she began to improve.
In the next post, I will continue examining this subject. I will bring up examples from my own life and the lives of others of synchronic events. I also welcome any of my readers to share their own stories of synchronic events in the area for comments below. I will attempt to give readers a summary of different hypotheses that have been advanced to explain these phenomena. And finally, I will advance my own hypothesis on what can be at play in them.
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I hope to see you in my next post,
Till then,
Dr T