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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 causality. 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.Jung, Carl Gustav, and Wolfgang Pauli. 1952 1955. The Interpretation of Nature and the Psyche, translated from German Naturerklärung und Psyche.Main, Roderick. 2000. " Religion, Science, and Synchronicity". Harvest: Journal for Jungian Studies 46(2):89–107. Archived from the original on 8 December 2006. This culminated in the Pauli–Jung conjecture. (2025). 9781845407599, Imprint Academic. ISBN 9781845407599Beitman, Bernard D. 2009. " Coincidence Studies: A Freudian Perspective ". PsycCRITIQUES 55(49): Article 8. . .Jung, Carl G. 1951 2005. " Synchronicity". Pp. 91–98 in Jung on Synchronicity and the Paranormal, edited by R. Main. London: Taylor & Francis.
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 Superstition". 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 Schizophrenia.
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 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.Benjamin Radford. 4 February 2014. " Synchronicity: Definition & Meaning". Live Science. Retrieved 25 June 2020. (2025). 9783319262987 ISBN 9783319262987
Jung coined the term synchronicity as part of a lecture in May 1930, or as early as 1928, at first for use in discussing Chinese religious and philosophical concepts. His first public articulation of the term came in 1930 at the memorial address for Richard Wilhelm where Jung stated:
The I Ching is one of the five classics of Confucianism. By selecting a passage according to the traditional chance operations such as tossing coins and counting out yarrow stalks, the text is supposed to give insights into a person's inner states. Jung characterised this as the belief in synchronicity, and himself believed the text to give apt readings in his own experiences. He would later also recommend this practice to certain of his patients. Jung argued that synchronicity could be found diffused throughout Chinese philosophy more broadly and in various Taoist concepts. 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, Arthur Schopenhauer, whom Jung placed alongside Leibniz as the two philosophers most influential to his formulation of the concept, and Johannes Kepler. He points to Schopenhauer, especially, as providing an early conception of synchronicity in the quote:
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. In 1932, physicist Wolfgang Pauli and Jung began what would become an extended correspondence in which they discussed and collaborated on various topics surrounding synchronicity, contemporary science, and what is now known as the Pauli effect. 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. It was not until a 1951 Eranos lecture, after having gradually developed the concept for over two decades, that Jung gave his first major outline of synchronicity. The following year, Jung and Pauli published their 1952 work The Interpretation of Nature and the Psyche (), which contained Jung's central monograph on the subject, "".
Other notable influences and precursors to synchronicity can be found in: the theological concept of correspondences,Wolfgang Pauli in letter to Jung 1950Brach, Jean-Pierre, and Wouter J. Hanegraaff. (2006). "Correspondences". In Dictionary of Gnosis & Western Esotericism, edited by Wouter Hanegraaff. sympathetic magic,Robert Todd Carroll, "sympathetic magic" in The Skeptic's Dictionary astrology,Marie-Louise von Franz, Man and His Symbols (1964), p. 227 and alchemy.
The Pauli–Jung conjecture is a collaboration in metatheory between physicist Wolfgang Pauli and analytical psychologist Carl Jung, centered on the concept of . It was mainly developed between 1946 and 1954, four years before Pauli's death, and speculates on a perspective within the disciplines of both collaborators. 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 and brilliant 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 , and connections which lack causal reasoning are seen as . This chance-based interpretation, however, is incongruent with the primordial mind, which instead interprets this Categorization as . The primordial framework in fact places emphasis on these connections, just as the modern framework emphasizes causal ones. In this regard, causality, like synchronicity, is a human interpretation imposed onto external phenomena. Primordial modes of thought are however, according to Jung, necessary constituents of the modern psyche that inevitably protrude into modern life—providing the basis for meaningful interpretation of the world by way of meaning-based connections. Just as the principles of psychological causality provide meaningful understanding of causal connections, so too the principle of synchronicity attempts to provide meaningful understanding of acasual connections. Jung placed synchronicity as one of three main conceptual elements in understanding the psyche:
Jung felt synchronicity to be a principle that had Explanation power towards his concepts of archetypes and the collective unconscious. Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious: Jung defines the 'collective unconscious' as akin to . It described a governing dynamic which underlies the whole of human experience and history—social, , psychological, and Spirituality. 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.Brown, R. S. 2014. "Evolving Attitudes". International Journal of Jungian Studies 6(3):243–53.In the final two pages of the Conclusion to Synchronicity, Jung states that not all coincidences are meaningful and further explains the creative causes of this phenomenon.
It is also pointed out that, since Jung took into consideration only the narrow definition of causality—only the efficient cause—his notion of acausality is also narrow and so is not applicable to final and formal causes as understood in Aristotelianism or Thomism systems.Arraj, James. 1996. " Synchronicity and Formal Causality". Ch. 8 in The Mystery of Matter: Nonlocality, Morphic Resonance, Synchronicity and the Philosophy of Nature of St. Thomas Aquinas. . . 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.
It is impossible, with our present resources, to explain ESP
Roderick Main, in the introduction to his 1997 book Jung on Synchronicity and the Paranormal, wrote:
Despite this, synchronicity experiences and the synchronicity principle continue to be studied within philosophy, cognitive science, and analytical psychology. Synchronicity is widely challenged by the sufficiency of probability theory in explaining the occurrence of coincidences, the relationship between synchronicity experiences and , and doubts about the theory's psychiatric or scientific usefulness.
Psychologist Fritz Levi, a contemporary of Jung, criticised the theory in his 1952 review, published in the periodical Neue Schweizer Rundschau ( New Swiss Observations). Levi saw Jung's theory as vague in determinability of synchronistic events, saying that Jung never specifically explained his rejection of "magic causality" to which such an acausal principle as synchronicity would be related. He also questioned the theory's usefulness.
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. Last updated October 27, 2015.
In a 2014 interview, emeritus professor and statistician David J. Hand states:
In a 2015 paper, scholars M. K. Johansen and M. Osman state:
Carl Jung himself speculated on the role of mathematical structures in synchronicity, referencing the Fibonacci sequence as a potential underlying principle behind synchronistic patterns.Jung, C.G. (1975). C.G. Jung Letters, Vol. 1 (G. Adler, Ed.). Princeton University Press.
One notable proposal is physicist Gregory S. Duane’s chaotic oscillator model, described in Synchronicity from Synchronized Chaos, which draws parallels between synchronized chaos in complex systems and Jung’s notion of acausal order.Duane, G. S. (2003). Synchronicity from synchronized chaos. International Journal of Bifurcation and Chaos, 13(11), 3105–3125. Duane suggests that apparent coincidences may arise naturally in systems exhibiting chaotic synchronization, potentially offering a physical analogy to synchronicity.
The Pauli–Jung Conjecture, developed through correspondence between Jung and Nobel Prize-winning physicist Wolfgang Pauli, has also drawn interest from scholars. Atmanspacher and Fuchs (2014) discuss how concepts like quantum entanglement and nonlocality might serve as metaphors—though not literal explanations—for synchronicity.Atmanspacher, H., & Fuchs, C. A. (2014). The Pauli–Jung Conjecture and Its Impact Today. Imprint Academic.
From a cognitive science perspective, Johansen and Osman (2015) have argued that perceived coincidences can be understood through rational cognition models, heuristics, and confirmation bias. Their work suggests that synchronicity experiences may be psychologically explainable rather than acausal in nature.Johansen, M. K., & Osman, M. (2015). Coincidences: A fundamental consequence of rational cognition. New Ideas in Psychology, 39, 34–44.
Although these approaches vary in discipline and methodology, they share a common interest in identifying potential frameworks—be they physical, cognitive, or symbolic—that might help contextualize synchronicity experiences.
After describing some examples, Jung wrote: "When coincidences pile up in this way, one cannot help being impressed by them—for the greater the number of terms in such a series, or the more unusual its character, the more improbable it becomes."
In 1983 The Police released an album titled Synchronicity, inspired by Arthur Koestler's discussion of synchronicity in his book The Roots of Coincidence. A song from the album, "Synchronicity II", simultaneously describes the story of a man experiencing a mental breakdown and a lurking monster emerging from a Scottish lake.
Björk wrote a song titled "Synchronicity" for Spike Jonze's Hot Chocolate DVD.
Rising Appalachia released a song titled "Synchronicity" on their 2015 album Wider Circles.
Pauli–Jung conjecture
Analytical psychology
In analytical psychology, the recognition of seemingly-meaningful coincidences is a mechanism by which unconscious material is brought to the attention of the conscious mind. A harmful or developmental outcome can then result only from the individual's response to such material. Jung proposed that the concept could have psychiatric use in mitigating the negative effects of over-rationalisation and proclivities towards mind–body dualism.
Philosophy of science
Jung held that there was both a philosophical and scientific basis for synchronicity. He identified the complementary nature of causality and acausality with Eastern sciences and protoscience, stating "Eastern world bases much of its science on this irregularity and considers coincidences as the reliable basis of the world rather than causality. Synchronism is the prejudice of the East; causality is the modern prejudice of Western world" (see also: universal causation). Contemporary scholar L. K. Kerr writes:
Paranormal
Jung's use of the concept in arguing for the existence of paranormal phenomena has been widely considered pseudoscientific by modern scientific scepticism. Furthermore, his collaborator Wolfgang Pauli objected to his dubious experiments of the concept involving astrology—which Jung believed to be supported by the laboratory experiments behind the uncertainty principle's formulation. Jung similarly turned to the works of parapsychologist Joseph B. Rhine to support a connection between synchronicity and the paranormal. In his book , Jung wrote:
How are we to recognize acausal combinations of events, since it is obviously impossible to examine all chance happenings for their causality? The answer to this is that acausal events may be expected most readily where, on closer reflection, a causal connection appears to be inconceivable.
Studies
Scientific reception
Since their inception, Jung's theories of synchronicity have been highly controversial and have never had widespread scientific approval. Scientific scepticism regards them as pseudoscience. Likewise, mainstream science does not support paranormal explanations of coincidences.Johansen, M. K., and M. Osman. 2015. "Coincidences: A fundamental consequence of rational cognition". New Ideas in Psychology 39:34-44.
Scientific explanations
Several researchers have proposed models that attempt to frame synchronicity in scientific or quasi-scientific terms. While the concept remains controversial and outside the scope of mainstream scientific consensus, these efforts reflect ongoing interdisciplinary interest in understanding perceived meaningful coincidences.
Examples
Jung
Jung tells the following story as an example of a synchronistic event in his 1960 book Synchronicity:
Deschamps
French writer Émile Deschamps claims in his memoirs that, in 1805, he was treated to some plum pudding by a stranger named Monsieur de Fontgibu. Ten years later, the writer encountered plum pudding on the menu of a Paris restaurant and wanted to order some, but the waiter told him that the last dish had already been served to another customer, who turned out to be de Fontgibu. Many years later, in 1832, Deschamps was at a dinner and once again ordered plum pudding. He recalled the earlier incident and told his friends that only de Fontgibu was missing to make the setting complete—and in the same instant, the now-senile de Fontgibu entered the room, having got the wrong address.
Pauli
In his book Thirty Years That Shook Physics: The Story of Quantum Theory (1966), George Gamow writes about Wolfgang Pauli, who was apparently considered a person particularly associated with synchronicity events. Gamow whimsically refers to the "Pauli effect", a mysterious phenomenon which is not understood on a purely Materialism basis, and probably never will be. The following anecdote is told:
In popular culture
Philip K. Dick makes reference to "Pauli's synchronicity" in his 1963 science-fiction novel, The Game-Players of Titan, in reference to Precognition Psionics abilities being interfered with by other psionic abilities such as psychokinesis: "an acausal connective event".Dick, Philip K. 1963 1992. The Game-Players of Titan (1st ed.). New York: Vintage Books. . p. 128.
See also
Notes
Citations
Works cited
Further reading
(2025). 9781569245996, Marlowe. ISBN 9781569245996
(2025). 9788895604022, Pari Publishing. ISBN 9788895604022
External links
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