Structural Aspects of Synchronistic Moments in Psychotherapy-Findings of an Empirical Study of Synchronicities in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis1

Synchronicity describes a meaningful coincidence of events, which is familiar to us from treatments of our patients, but unfortunately has not yet been empirically substantiated. Adding to previous findings that point out beneficial aspects of synchronicity (Marlo, 2022; Lagutina, 2021; Connolly, 2015), in this paper I will show through a series of five synchronistic moments which happened in the context of therapy and analysis and which have been documented empirically, how synchronicities occur and can be used therapeutically. In my research I found several situational factors that can be considered structural aspects of synchronistic moments. Furthermore, I will show that synchronistic phenomena can have a positive influence if certain relational and transference-countertransference referential aspects are considered by the therapist and analyst. The concept of synchronicity brings the possibility of a further therapeutical instrument for the patient-analyst-dyad.

Opportunities of online analysis

The question of whether tele-analysis is an acceptable way of conducting analysis has been discussed since it has become available. Merchant (2016) and others concluded that 'the essentials of a genuine analytic process are not necessarily precluded' (p. 1). In this paper, the author goes a step further and examines potential advantages of tele-analysis. There may be benefits for patients with a history of physical or sexual abuse who value the distance. The potential for a 'safe place' for work with erotic transference is also examined. In a further section the author is interested in allowing the analyst the freedom to practise in an authentic way, congruent with their personality. Also explored is the concept of the interactive field including the technological medium, which is subject to synchronistic events. Finally, the author gives examples of a deep connection between patient and analyst which came about despite the physical distance.

On Mystery: explorations on the experience of the numinous

The present work aims to present ideas about the notion of 'Mystery', based on the contributions of various thinkers from different areas of knowledge. It will focus especially on the experience itself, that is, on the human possibility of generating the mystical experience and conceptualizing the dimension from contact with it. Concepts such as 'Homo Mysticus' (Erich Neumann), 'Numinous' (Rudolf Otto), 'Synchronicity' and 'Self' (Carl G. Jung) will be developed, approaching them from a psychological perspective. A distinction between two different categories of contact is proposed in the article: violent experiences and subtle experiences. The referential framework of analytical psychology enables the possibility of a transcendent and immaterial realm creatively linked to psychic reality, as well as an attempt to understand it. The conceptualization of the symbolic from the Jungian worldview allows us to understand the experience of Mystery from a psychological point of view in relation to the surrounding world. The idea is even raised that the ultimate (and implicit) purpose of the analysis is the manifestation of Mystery, a general name that could encompass the different phenomenological experiences. Is it possible that such experiences occur in the cultural circumstances of the present? What place does Mystery occupy in these times? What forms could it take? By observing dreams, imaginations and synchronicities, experiences of the mysterious will be explored in the context of contemporary Jungian analysis.

The symbolic and non-symbolic aspect of image: clinical and cultural reflections

It is fundamental for analytical psychology to understand images symbolically. However, Jung was aware of the non-symbolic and direct appearance of image in synchronistic visions and dreams. Therefore, there are two aspects of the non-symbolic: literal and synchronistic. Firstly, the pathology of the non-symbolic was explored in psychosomatic syndromes, trauma, borderline syndromes and autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Then the historical and cultural considerations show that dreams were shared and understood directly and non-symbolically in Japanese medieval times. Historically, the symbolic aspect emerged through the loss of this directness and is characteristic for the modern, western, and adult consciousness. However, the increasing prevalence of ASD and ambiguity between reality and virtual reality show that the contemporary world is again dominated by directness and the non-symbolic, which can be called 'postmodern consciousness'.

The philosophy of the Yijing and Jungian analytical psychology: a comparative study

The Yijing (Book of Changes) occupied a very significant position in C.G. Jung's mind, which was closely related to Richard Wilhelm's active recommendation and introduction of the Yijing wisdom. Inspired by the Yijing, Jung set forth the 'principle of synchronicity', by which scholars tend to discuss the relationship between Yijing and Jungian psychology. In fact, Jungian analytical psychology conceives in-depth onto-cosmological connotations corresponding to the philosophy of the Yijing. The terms invented or employed by Jung such as 'archetype', 'Self', 'individuation', 'mandala,' 'anima and animus', 'persona and shadow' are interrelated with the connotations of Taiji (Supreme Ultimate) (○) and liang yi (two-mode) () in the Yijing philosophy. A comparative study of the two disciplines can help us gain a more comprehensive and deeper understanding of both, and further improve the exchanges of Eastern and Western cultures.

Meeting the orphan: early relational trauma, synchronicity and the psychoid

In this paper I attempt to show how deep engagement, which is gradually developed within the relational container, can facilitate access to the psychoid dimension of the unconscious characterized by a quality of interconnectedness. The resulting synchronistic experiences can support and strengthen this container as well as having profound re-connecting impact on the people involved. With this in mind, I suggest that openness to this dimension can be very important in working with the issues of loss, abandonment, aloneness and mistrust in human connections - the symbolic domain of the orphan. Although none of the patients I describe in this paper were actual orphans, symbolically the orphan theme featured significantly in their processes, in that early relational trauma left them feeling profoundly alone and unable to trust human contact. For this reason, the most important yet difficult challenge of the work was to help them restore their sense of connectedness to themselves and to others. I consider the role of attunement and reverie as the basis for facilitating this openness and propose that such openness can be seen as a feature of the analytic attitude in its own right and that it constitutes a unique contribution of the Jungian approach to working with early trauma.

Synchronicity and meaning

It is usually thought that synchronicity, characterised as 'meaningful coincidence', is therefore understandable in relation to the concept of 'meaning'. I will explore the largely unhelpful symbiotic relationship between 'coincidence' and 'meaning' by comparing synchronicity with synchoricity - coincidence in space rather than time. These two concepts are often mixed together and I will attempt to describe a 'pure' synchronicity in order to sharpen our sense of how meaning is felt to arise from coincidence. It will then be suggested that the standard concept of synchronicity is mostly psychologically irrelevant and, when adjusted to remove elements which are explained quite naturally by evolutionary theory, we are left with a concept which has implications both for the metaphysical foundations of Analytical Psychology and the individualistic emphasis one commonly finds in the field.

Who is my Jung? Memories, Reflections, Prospects

The author describes his personal and professional journey in relation to the subject of the AJA 40^th anniversary conference, 'Who is my Jung?' The first part of the paper covers his early life and his attempt to bring together two opposing parts within him: valuation of a scientific approach, and an interest in the inner world, dreams and the paranormal. Discussion of his professional life follows, including his relationship with Gerhard Adler, past problems and splits within the Jungian community and the author's attempts to heal these. The value of both remembering and forgetting is questioned. This leads onto ideas that bring value and meaning to his work and life, and which bridge the inner divisions he felt in his early life: notably Jung's focus on applying scientific theory to the mystery of the psyche, his relational attitude (exemplified by the dialectical process and his interest in countertransference) and his theory of synchronicity. Recent discussion in Jungian writing has questioned the nature of synchronistic experiences and explored how they may emerge naturally from complex systems. The paper ends the author's continuing journey with two personal vignettes describing how meaning may emerge from the unconscious.

Beyond the logic of Lemma: the oneness of life and its environment, the oneness of within and without

In this paper the 'analyst as a citizen in the world' is understood as the analyst interconnecting and harmonising with his or her environment, including not only society, but also nature and the universe. In this sense, Buddhism teaches the Oneness of Life and its Environment, and links are made between Mahayana Buddhism and Jung's understanding of the Self and individuation. The Logic of Lemma in the Flower Ornament Sutra indicates that all phenomena in the world can merge with each other without losing individuality; ten stages are described from the Lotus Sutra and links are made with the development in respect to the ego; Kenji Miyazawa and his work are given as examples to illustrate this. Causality and synchronicity are explored in terms of the interaction between the individual and the environment, and three examples are given where sometimes individual, egoic, causality is more of a feature and sometimes synchronicity has a greater prominence. The paper ends with an examination of tree drawings, made over a period of 50 years by junior high school students, which indicates the way that these individuals have portrayed themselves and their relation to their environment.

From active imagination to active life: at the roots of Jungian social activism

Our traditional Western worldview is often unconsciously based on a polarized, dichotomous perspective. However, many of Jung's ideas hint at a deep interrelation between opposites, such as inside and outside, which are, as the principle of synchronicity shows, rooted in a conceptualization of psyche and matter conceived as intertwined. Another pair of philosophical concepts, traditionally considered as opposites, needs further investigation: that between imagination and reality. If we are lucky in our daily practice as analysts, we can use imagination as a powerful tool to help people discover themselves as individuals and to get in deeper, more lively and responsible touch with reality. This paper explores the difference that Jung outlined between 'active imagination' and 'passive fantasies', and the transformative power of taking an active part in what imaginatively happens - he called it 'active participation' - rather than being passively overwhelmed by invasive fantasies. It is argued that it makes a great difference whether we become the actors and not just the spectators of our lives, and this is linked with the core of the individuation process in which, if individuals discover their particular place and meaning in the universe, they can live an 'active life', playing a heartfelt and responsible role in the collective world to which they belong. These ideas are at the heart of Jung's work, and they represent one of the roots of Jungian social activism.

Enlightenment and individuation: syncretism, synchronicity and beyond

This paper opens with a personal introduction to the topic of syncretism within the context of a comparison of enlightenment associated with Eastern religious traditions and individuation as experienced through Jungian analysis. A brief exploration of the recent scholarly revival of interest in syncretism follows. Some close parallels with Jungian theory are highlighted, especially in the work of Timothy Light. Applications to the syncretic trends in Tang culture along the Silk Road(s) suggest deeper patterns of interconnectedness lie at the heart of these trends. A complex systems view highlights similarities between syncretic connections and non-local aspects of synchronistic field events. The final section attempts to extend this approach to innovation in general terms through the recently articulated concept of the 'adjacent possible' from the writing of Stuart Kauffman. From this, the notion of a collective pre-conscious dimension to the psyche is extrapolated. The unifying thread of acausal emergent forms provides a potential synthetic network for these phenomena.

Hiding in plain sight: Jung, astrology, and the psychology of the unconscious

Astrology was a lifelong interest for C.G. Jung and an important aid in his formulation of psyche and psychic process. Archetypally configured, astrology provided Jung an objective means to a fuller understanding of the analysand's true nature and unique individuation journey. Jung credits astrology with helping to unlock the mystery of alchemy and in so doing providing the symbol language necessary for deciphering the historically remote cosmology of Gnosticism. Astrology also aided Jung's work on synchronicity. Despite astrology's worth to Jung's development of analytical psychology, its fundamental role in guiding his discoveries is all but absent from historical notice. The astrological natal chart seems rarely used clinically, and many clinicians seem unaware of its value as a dynamic diagram of the personality and the potentialities within which nature and nurture foster and/or discourage for individual growth and development over the lifespan. This paper charts Jung's interest in astrology and suggests why his great regard for it and other paranormal or occult practices remains largely neglected and unknown.

A lemma science of mind: the potential of the Kegon (Flower Ornament) Sutra

The paper argues for a new perspective on the relationship between Buddhism and European psychology, or sciences of the mind, based in the Kegon Sutra, a text that emerged in the early stages of Mahayana Buddhism (3^rd - 5^th century CE). The basis of European science is logos intellection, formalized by Aristotle as following three laws: the law of identity, the law of contradiction and the law of the excluded middle. Logic in the Buddhist tradition, by contrast, is based in lemma (meaning to understand as a whole not with language, but with intuition). Lemma-based science born in the Buddhist tradition shows that rational perception is possible even without the three laws of logos. The Kegon Sutra, which explains what Buddha preached only a week after he attained enlightenment, is unified under the logic of lemma and can be seen as an effort to create a 'lemma science of the mind'. The fundamental teaching of the Kegon Sutra is explored, and its principles are compared with primary process thinking and the unconscious as outlined by Freud and Jung. Jung's research of Eastern texts led him to create a science of the mind that went further than Freud: his concept of synchronicity is given by way of example and can be seen anew within the idea of a lemma-based science.

The Fibonacci Life-Chart Method (FLCM) as a foundation for Carl Jung's theory of synchronicity

Since the scientific method requires events to be subject to controlled examination it would seem that synchronicities are not scientifically investigable. Jung speculated that because these incredible events are like the random sparks of a firefly they cannot be pinned down. However, doubting Jung's doubts, the author provides a possible method of elucidating these seemingly random and elusive events. The author draws on a new method, designated the Fibonacci Life-Chart Method (FLCM), which categorizes phase transitions and Phi fractal scaling in human development based on the occurrence of Fibonacci numbers in biological cell division and self-organizing systems. The FLCM offers an orientation towards psychological experience that may have relevance to Jung's theory of synchronicity in which connections are deemed to be intrinsically meaningful rather than demonstrable consequences of cause and effect. In such a model synchronistic events can be seen to be, as the self-organizing system enlarges, manifestations of self-organized critical moments and Phi fractal scaling. Recommendations for future studies include testing the results of the FLCM using case reports of synchronistic and spiritual experiences.

Synchronistic mind-matter correlations in therapeutic practice: a commentary on Connolly (2015)

This commentary adds some ideas and refinements to the inspiring discussion in a recent paper by Connolly () that makes use of a dual-aspect framework developed by us earlier. One key point is that exceptional experiences (of which synchronicities are a special case) cannot in general be identified with experiences of non-categorial or acategorial mental states. In fact, most exceptional experiences reported in the literature are experiences of categorial states. Conversely, there are non-categorial and acategorial states whose experience is not exceptional. Moreover, the psychodynamics of a synchronistic experience contain a subtle mesh of interacting processes pertaining to categorial, non-categorial and acategorial domains. We outline how this mesh may be addressed in particular cases of synchronicity described by Connolly.

Bounded in a nutshell and a king of infinite space: the embodied self and its intentional world

This paper explores the implications of developments in phenomenological biology for a reconsideration of synchronicity and the self. The enactive approach of Maturana and Varela aims to reformulate the relation between biological organisms and the world in a non-Cartesian way, breaking down the conceptual division between mind and world so that meaning can be seen as a function of the species-specific way in which an organism engages with its environment. This leads to a view of the self as inherently embodied and engaged with the particularities of its material, cultural and social worlds, while being infinitely extended through the power of imagination; this enables humans to adapt to many different social and material environments. In order to understand these differences, we need to 'enter into the world of the other'. Where understanding of other animals requires immersion in their environmental milieux, understanding other humans requires us also to recognize that differences in socio-cultural milieux create significantly different worlds of meaning and experience.