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. This culminated in the Pauli–Jung conjecture<!--boldface per WP:R#PLA-->.
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.
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.
Origins
thumb|upright|[[Carl G. Jung, who coined the term synchronicity between 1928 and 1930]]
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, 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,
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. 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. sympathetic magic, astrology, and alchemy. 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 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 . 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.
Philosophy of science
Jung held that there was both a philosophical and scientific basis for synchronicity. Either the final causality is inherent in synchronicity, as it leads to individuation; or synchronicity can be a kind of replacement for final causality. However, such finalism or teleology is considered to be outside the domain of modern science.
Jung's theory, and philosophical worldview implicated by it, includes not only mainstream science thoughts but also esoteric ones and ones that are against mainstream.
Paranormal
thumb|[[Astrological aspect|Astral configurations in astrology represent for Jung an example of synchronicity, that is, of a parallel, non-causal relationship between the development of celestial phenomena and those marked by terrestrial time.]]
Jung's use of the concept in arguing for the existence of paranormal phenomena has been widely considered pseudoscientific by modern scientific scepticism.
Studies
- A 1989 overview of research areas and methodology in the study of coincidence published by the Journal of the American Statistical Association addresses various potentials in researching synchronicity experiences.
- A 2016 study found that clients who have disclosed synchronicity experiences in clinical setting often report not being listened to, accepted, or understood. The study also found that for therapists these experiences often come as a shock and a challenge to their own worldviews, prompting researchers to specify a need to provide accurate and reliable information about synchronicity experiences for mental health professionals.
- Another 2016 study of 226 therapists found that 44% reported synchronicity experiences in the therapeutic setting, and 67% felt that synchronicity experiences could be useful for therapy. The study also points out ways of explanations of synchronicity:
- A 2018 study shows that the concept of synchronicity finds clinical application in psychotherapies in form of a Jungian-specific approach to interpretation. Already the conceptual idea of synchronicity offers the therapist an additional therapeutic tool to put potentially meaningful experienced coincidences between him and the patient into a subjective narrative, which can be experienced by the patient as meaningful. If a synchronistic moment is sensitively recognized, thematized and interpreted as such, it can have positive consequences for the therapeutic relationship and therapy.
Scientific reception
Since their inception, Jung's theories of synchronicity have been highly controversial
Despite this, synchronicity experiences and the synchronicity principle continue to be studied within philosophy, cognitive science, and analytical psychology.
In a 1981 paper, parapsychologist Charles Tart writes:
Robert Todd Carroll, author of The Skeptic's Dictionary in 2003, argues that synchronicity experiences are better explained as apophenia—the tendency for humans to find significance or meaning where none exists. He states that over a person's lifetime one can be expected to encounter several seemingly-unpredictable coincidences and that there is no need for Jung's metaphysical explanation of these occurrences.
In a 2014 interview, emeritus professor and statistician David J. Hand states:
In a 2015 paper, scholars M. K. Johansen and M. Osman state: