Synchronicity -- Carl Jung Synchronicity Is a

Synchronicity -- Carl Jung Synchronicity is a term that C.G. Jung (Carl Jung) used to describe the simultaneous occurrence of two events that become connected because they bring about a "meaningful coincidence" (Jung, 1951, p. 90). Examples of synchronicity will be presented in this paper. Jung is the internationally respected Swiss psychiatrist who founded the school of analytical psychiatry and authored a number of books, including: Dreams; Red Book; Psychological Types; The Undiscovered Self; Psychology and Alchemy; Answer to Job; Mysterium Coniunctionis; and Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle.

The book Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle will be the primary source for this paper; also, this paper will also use Chapter 5 from the book Jung on Synchronicity and the Paranormal as well. What is Synchronicity? In the book Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle, Jung takes time to explain what "acausal" means. One dictionary simply explains that "acausal" means something has no cause; in another, acausal refers to something that is not governed or operating according to the laws of cause and effect.

For Jung, he writes that people will "…look around in vain in the macro-physical world for acausal events," and the reason they will be so hard to find is that humans can't imagine events that are "…connected non-causally" and that are capable of a "non-casual explanation" (Jung, 2013, p. 8). However, Jung continues, just because acausal events are not visible doesn't mean they do not exist; the existence of acausal events follows "…logically from the premise of statistical truth," he explains.

And because inquiring into acausal events is not possible (albeit "regular events" which are repeated can be investigated) -- because dealing with "ephemeral events which leave no demonstrable traces…except fragmentary memories" are usually witnessed by a single person, and even if several people witnessed an ephemeral event it would likely not be believed (Jung, 8).

In other words, empirical science will likely never be able to deny or prove rare, ephemeral events, but in his research Jung sought a "general field" where "acausal events are not only possible but are found to be actual facts" (Jung, 10). The field he is referring to is a "…immeasurably wide field" which he calls the world of "chance," and in that world a "chance event" appears to be "casually unconnected with the coinciding fact" (Jung, 10).

What he is getting at here is that there are certainly any number of incidents that could be defined as "chance," but what about incidents whose "chancefulness seems open to doubt"? From this point Jung offers a "chance" event that has more to it than what would be considered pure chance. It was the first of April, 1949, a Friday, and fish were served for lunch. A series of events ("chance" for sure, but ironic events) followed that one could call acausal or synchronicity.

That afternoon a former patient of Jung's showed up (he hadn't seen him in many months) with some paintings he had done of fish. That evening someone brought embroidery with "fish-like monsters" in the design, and the next morning (April 2) another patient that he had not seen for "many years" showed up and explained a vivid dream she had. This former patient dreamed she was standing on the shore of a lake and there was "…a large fish that swam straight towards her and landed at her feet" (Jung, 14).

Before these events began happening, Jung had been conducting research on how the fish symbol emerged in history (the symbol that is often used to represent Christianity).' His suspicion (following this series of "chance" events) was that these represented an "acausal connection" and so he decided these could be identified as a "meaningful coincidence" (Jung, 14). The events "…made a considerable impression on me," he writes (14).

They could not have happened "by mere chance," he explained, however he adds that the normal explanation most people would come up with is that those fish-themed incidents were "lucky hits and do not require acausal interpretation" (15). Jung notes that the astronomer Flammarion -- who, on the one hand, wrote that the odds of a person having a telepathic experience was 1 in 804 million, but on the other hand had an extraordinary experience that has no logical explanation -- has an interesting story to tell.

Flammarion was writing his book on the physical qualities of Earth's atmosphere, and when he started the chapter on "wind-force…a sudden gust of wind swept all his papers off the table and blew them out of the window" (Jung, 20). As a way of building the drama in this chapter, Jung also shares a story of a young mother who (in 1914) took a photo of her son in the Black Forest of Germany.

But World War I broke out and she was not able to "fetch it" from the film store in Strasbourg. Two years later she bought more film in Frankfort so she could photographer her daughter. When that film was developed it came back with a double exposure, Jung explains; the photo on the bottom was of her son from 1914. Somehow the original film turned in at Strasbourg had gotten into circulation and got mixed in with the new films. Hence, Jung has a synchronicity incident to back up his narrative.

Events like these cannot be easily explained away, Jung continues (27). They appear to border on "…the miraculous and frankly impossible," and they cannot be explained as "a question of cause and effect" but rather as a "…falling together in time, a kind of simultaneity." In Jung's essay "The Theory of Synchronicity," published in the book A guided tour of the collected works of C.G. Jung, he presents instances that are "…spontaneous, meaningful coincidences of so high a degree of improbability as to appear flatly unbelievable" (93).

He goes to the extreme of telling the reader that "…it makes no difference whether you refuse to believe this particular case or whether you dispose of it with an ad hoc explanation" (93). He goes on, saying he could share a "…great many such stories," and in every case there is no "casual" explanation for the stories, but the way in which each story leaves the realm of reasonableness is due to what Jung calls "…the psychic relativization of space and time" (93).

His story on page 93-94 is remarkable, and it concerns a young woman patient who proved to be "…psychologically inaccessible"; that is, she was well educated and very intelligent and her education had given her "…a weapon ideally suited to this purpose," which was to insist on rationalism and realism and to refuse psychological therapy. She had "sealed herself" in an.