I interpret literature, or reflect on philosophical ideas, in an exploratory manner. The focus here is on developing insights, and some of it is speculative. Occasionally, I consolidate it into longer essays.
Two different senses of ‘synchronistic phenomena’ are operative in Jung’s work. In a narrow sense, there are what I call ‘synchronicities’ on this blog: occasions where two or more events coincide although there is a low probability for them to do so, and where at the same time there is a pronounced sense of a ‘meaningful connection’ between them. That sense of meaning is often perceived only by...
When we become aware of a new phenomenon, it usually happens this way: you notice an occurrence, and then another one, and so on; soon you realize that it is a pattern; you give it a name; finally you collect instances and begin to investigate them: formulating explanations, making predictions, putting it all together in a theory of that phenomenon. Something like this presumably happened with...
Mirrors — those of the symbolic flavor, i.e. mirrors of the soul — don’t necessarily have to be visual. In one of Neil Gaiman’s short stories, a narrative work of art (i.e. a story-in-a-story) does the same trick that Oscar Wilde’s painting of Dorian Gray performs. Thus Gaiman removes the symbolic mirror one step further from literal mirrors.
The stated intent of Jung's synchronicities essay is somewhat at odds with the actual project that text carries out.
When we try to understand the synchronicities essay, and related writings from Jung’s late period, we face a deep-seated complication: Jung himself thought of his project along the lines of a misleading analogy...
Imagine you sit model for a painting. When it is finished, you look at it with surprise and admiration: the painter is a true artist, and this is his masterpiece. It brings out something about you, your true personality; it shows things of which you were only dimly aware yourself. To use an old expression: it reflects your soul.
There is an air of mysticism about claims, often found in Jungian psychology, that the unconscious ‘arranges’ things in the external world. How can something psychological, something that is — so to speak — merely ‘in my head’, have real influence over physical objects and other people? Is that just a figure of speech, or should it be taken seriously? And if the latter — how? Let’s clear this up!
There seems to be some confusion about the difference between the terms ‘synchronicity’ and ‘synchronicities’. So let’s see if we can sort that out, using the two examples above.
Mirrors reveal something deep to us — something about ourselves; and it is deep in part because we did not know that it was about ourselves.
By synchronicities we do not mean any old instance of an unlikely event, i.e. one that has a very small probability of occurring. That is necessary, but not sufficient. An event (or circumstance) qualifies as a synchronicity only if it is ‘meaningful’, if it invokes in a subject a sense and feeling of some deeper significance.
Leif Frenzel is a writer and independent researcher. He has a background in philosophy, literature, music, and information technology.