Theory of Synchronicity of Carl Gustav Jung

Theory of Synchronicity of Carl Gustav Jung

Everyone must have thought: "¡Look what coincidence!"I mean a meeting, a phrase read in a book, an unexpected finding to a news that took us by surprise. Synchronicity is when something happens to you that seems "by chance" but that combines so perfectly with the events of your life that makes your heart beat and think: "¡It seems destiny!".

Synchronicity is what makes you feel aligned with the universe, as part of a great design. Who spoke for the first time in an organic and deep way about it was the great Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Gustav Jung in the middle of the last century. In this Psychology-online article, we will talk about the Theory of Synchronicity of Carl Gustav Jung.

You may also be interested: what is a psychoanalyst and what index does
  1. What is synchronicity according to Jung
  2. How synchronicity works according to Jung  
  3. Synchronicity examples according to Jung

What is synchronicity according to Jung

The word synchronicity derives from the Greek roots Syn ("with", which marks the idea of ​​meeting) and khronones ("time"): meeting in time, simultaneity. Synchronicity as a concept was introduced by psychoanalyst Carl Gustav Jung in 1950, and defined it as a Acausal connections principle.

Carl Jung's synchronicity theory states that No event is a fact accidental,But our life is full of a set of coincidences; or rather, those that we are used to considering coincidences but that are not really at all.

The definition of the term Jungian synchronicity crowned the uninterrupted effort of the psychoanalyst by Understand how human beings create connections:

  • How our unconscious world connects to the conscious world.
  • How our past, personal and collective is related to the present moment of consciousness at the service of a process that tends to greater integration.
  • In what way our inner life, subjectivity, comes to the surface, finds other lives and creates with them links, first with the parents, then with the family and then with increasingly broad circles of friends, acquaintances, to society in Your set.

Synchronicity categories

¿How synchronicity works? According to Jung, he does not reside outside us, in a supernatural destination: it is within us and is a principle of psychological connection. According to Jung's analysis, there are three types of significant causalities that are part of the synchronicity discourse:

  1. Coincidence between psychic content and a specific event: a thought, dream or desire that coincides in time and space. The classic example is to think about someone and meet him after a while.
  2. Coincidence between psychic content and a general event: A thought, sleep or desire that does not materially affect your life, but that is relevant to what your conscious or unconscious mind is generating (distance coincidence in time and space). This is the case of premonitory dreams of catastrophic events, which not by chance affect thousands of people in the world. Shortly before September 11, 2001, there was an increase in global dream activities that had the sinking of the twin towers in a symbolic or realistic way.
  3. "Outdated" coincidence in time between psychic content and a distant event: a thought, sleep or desire and an event that, however, occurs at a distance, perhaps years later. For example, you can dream of details about your cousin's wedding with a stranger who will come true later.

How synchronicity works according to Jung  

According to Jung, you can talk about synchronicity when a significant coincidence between a psychic event and a physical-objective without any causal relationship Between the two events. In this case, by psychic event you can understand a premonition, a dream, a vision, a feeling, an oracle or an archetypal image that will find a tangible feedback in the person's life, thus revealing themselves true.

Junguiana synchronicity has three different characteristics:

  1. The Events are connected in a Acausal way, And not thanks to a chain of causes and effects on which an individual can recognize the result of an intentional decision.
  2. The occurrence of the event is always accompanied by a deep emotional experience which is normally manifested at the same time as the event.
  3. The content of the synchronous experience, what the event is, has a Invariably symbolic character.

Synchronicity examples according to Jung

Now that we have seen how it works, we will see different examples of synchronicity according to Jung:

Coincidence of gold beetle

To Jung's intuition that the life of each one of us is splashed with events that have a deep connection with our unconscious, He was followed by an "illuminating" episode: a patient was telling him a dream, in which a golden beetle was present. Just during the session, Jung heard something crashing against the window crystal attracting his attention. ¡And what a surprise when, going to check it, he saw that it was no less than a ketonia, an insect similar to the beetle of a beautiful golden green!

Chance of Jungian synchronicity

Another of the synchronicity examples according to Jung can be seen in itself a person who is working on an article on the theory of the synchronicity of Carl Gustav Jung and comes into contact with people who are working on the same topic. Therefore, a friendship or pleasant knowledge is established. Is a pleasant coincidence, but not very significant in itself.

If that same person who writes an article about synchronicity and coincidences will think that no one around him knows this issue and that, therefore, it is difficult to find a person who works in the theory of synchronicity. So this becomes a coincidence that has a meaning.

This article is merely informative, in psychology-online we have no power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.

If you want to read more articles similar to Theory of Synchronicity of Carl Gustav Jung, We recommend that you enter our category of basic psychology.