Synchronicity

Synchronicity is a concept, first introduced by Carl Jung, which holds that events are "meaningful coincidences" if they occur with no causal relationship yet seem to be meaningfully related. During his career, Jung furnished several different definitions of it. Jung defined synchronicity as an "acausal connecting (togetherness) principle," "meaningful coincidence", and "acausal parallelism." He introduced the concept as early as the 1920s but gave a full statement of it only in 1951 in an Eranos lecture.

In 1952, he published a paper "Synchronizität als ein Prinzip akausaler Zusammenhänge" (Synchronicity – An Acausal Connecting Principle) in a volume which also contained a related study by the physicist and Nobel laureate Wolfgang Pauli, who was sometimes critical of Jung's ideas. Jung's belief was that, just as events may be connected by causality, they may also be connected by meaning. Events connected by meaning need not have an explanation in terms of causality, which does not generally contradict universal causation but in specific cases can lead to prematurely giving up causal explanation.

Concept

Jung used the concept of synchronicity in his psychotherapy. If during therapy, a dream, which the patient was having, coincided with an event in the outside world, Jung would consider this a clear instance of synchronicity. He also believed that in a person's life, synchronicity served a role similar to that of dreams, with the purpose of shifting a person's egocentric conscious thinking to greater wholeness.

A close associate of Jung, Marie-Louise von Franz, stated towards the end of her life that the concept of synchronicity must now be worked on by a new generation of researchers. For von Franz, synchronicity was a principle of acausal connections or meaningful coincidences due to the simultaneous occurrence of two different psychic and physical states.

Criticism

Synchronicity's acceptance and its implications often differ between psychologists and physicists. The former attach much importance to the concept, while the latter often see it as an unscientific concept that undermines the very foundations of their discipline.

See also

• Causality
• Coincidence
• Quantum entanglement
• Serendipity

References

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External links

• Carl Jung on Synchronicity

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