Publication Information: Book Title: Synchronicity: C.G. Jung, Psychoanalysis, and Religion. Contributors: M. D.
Faber - author. Publisher: Praeger Publishers. Place of Publication: Westport, CT. Publication Year: 1998. Page
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Faber, M. D. (Mel D.)

Synchronicity: C. G. Jung, psychoanalysis, and religion / M. D. Faber .

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-275-96374-8 (alk. paper)

1. Coincidence. 2. Psychoanalysis and religion. 3. Jung, C. G. ( Carl Gustav), 1875-1961. I. Title.

BF175.5.C65F33 1998

150.19

′

54--dc21 98-23555

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available.

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, by any process or technique,
without the express written consent of the publisher.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 98-23555

ISBN: 0-275-96374-8

First published in 1998

Praeger Publishers, 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881

An imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc.

Printed in the United States of America

∞

◯ + ™

The paper used in this book complies with the Permanent Paper Standard issued by the National
Information Standards Organization (Z39.48-1984).

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Copyright Acknowledgment

The author and pubhlisher gratefully acknowledge permission to reprint extracts from C. G. Jung,
On Synchronicity. Copyright 1977 by Princeton University Press. Reprinted with permission of
Princeton University Press.

-iv-

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and Religion. Contributors: M. D. Faber - author. Publisher: Praeger Publishers. Place of Publication: Westport, CT. Publication
Year: 1998. Page Number: iv.

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Contents

Preface

1. Jungian Synchronicity: Questions, Issues, Alternatives

2. The Psychoanalytic Matrix of Synchronistic Events

3. Unpacking the Jungian Projections: A New Psychoanalytic Account
of Synchronicity

4. Epilogue: A Discussion of Synchronicity and Related Matters

129

Bibliography

141

Index

145

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viii

Preface

We can understand synchronicity in two basic senses, one "soft," one "hard." Soft synchronicity is
simply making a connection between an event and one's existence. I am disposed to phone my ex-
wife from whom I have been estranged for several years. The estrangement feels increasingly
burdensome and unnatural. One evening as I am dwelling intensively on the issue I duck into a
movie. It involves an estranged couple who discover their way toward an amicable, forgiving
reconciliation and whose lives are deeply enriched by the emotional breakthrough. I ponder the
concurrence of my inward preoccupations and the external event. The book that follows is not
concerned with soft synchronicity because soft synchronicity is perfectly straightforward. If one is
acute, sensitive, intelligent, on the lookout for insights into life and the world, including his own life
and his own world, one will be dealing with soft synchronicity on a regular basis in keeping with the
motto E.M. Forster placed at the inception of his novel, Howards End: only connect. Hard
synchronicity is another matter entirely. It derives from the work of C.G. Jung; it raises the
discussion to lofty religious and philosophic heights; and it contends the following: remarkable
coincidences are not necessarily fortuitous or accidental. The universe, in fact, may be disposed to
engender hard synchronicities because the universe has a formal or integrative bent which
corresponds to, or "touches," the human being's formal or integrative bent. Not only are psyche and
matter in contact, they are in meaningful contact, the kind that produces revelations. Hard
synchronicity is my focus in this book.

Much of my discussion, as it turns out, swirls around an actual--and now notorious--synchronistic
event that occurred in Jung's consulting

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room half a century ago. Jung employs the event as a primary example of synchronicity in his
writings on the subject. A patient with a Cartesian, rationalistic outlook ( Jung presents her as
"possessed" by rationalism) arrives for treatment shortly after having dreamed about an Egyptian
scarab, or beetle. As she narrates the dream to Jung, a beetle flies into the office. Jung grabs the
thing and shows it to the woman who is, of course, flabbergasted. According to Jung, this wondrous
event has the effect of breaking down his patient's rationalism and commencing her spiritual rebirth.
For Jungians generally, the beetle incident is surrounded by a numinous, otherworldly glow; it is a
supreme moment in the history of Jungian psychotherapy and a witness to the accuracy of Jung's
synchronistic ruminations. For me, by contrast, the beetle episode is an example of therapeutic
manipulation and authoritarianism. It exposes the hidden agenda in both Jungian psychotherapy
and Jungian psychological theory. It becomes a battleground on which the problem of synchronicity
is thrashed out. To focus the discussion on a central, concrete example of "synchronicity" from the
writings of Jung, who invented the term, feels appropriate from the methodological angle.

Let me hasten to say, however, that my purpose in this book is not to refute Jung's theory but to
offer an alternative to it. Synchronicity is not something that can be proved or disproved once and
for all in a strict, scientific manner. It deals, truth told, with subjective states, and probabilities, and
arguments about the ultimate nature of the universe. Jung and his followers may be absolutely
correct in their approach to the business. But as I have discovered, synchronicity can be explained
in wholly realistic, naturalistic terms. It can be accounted for along psychoanalytic lines which do not
oblige us to include anything beyond our own expectable, normative, realistic experience. This is
my aim: to remove synchronicity entirely from the world of the paranormal and to place it squarely in
the world of naturalistic human behavior. Thus, I will be offering the reader what he can regard as a
fresh, original, psychoanalytic approach to synchronicity, a fresh, original psychoanalytic model of
synchronistic occurrences. By the time the reader has put the book down, he can ask himself in
which direction he wishes to go: toward the realm of Jungian esoterica or toward the realm of
psychoanalytic observation.

Why am I doing this? That's easy. Of late Western culture has witnessed what I think of in my own
mind as a retreat into magic in an age of science. We are inundated with the "new spirituality," with
New Age texts and the pronouncements of New Age gurus, psychic healers, channelers, shamans,
neo-pagans, astrologers, and crystal gazers, those who are pushing the supernatural and the
paranormal. We have even reached the

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stage where, for several dollars, one can pick up the telephone and chat with the "psychic" of his
choice, with an individual who claims to possess supernatural powers, who claims to be involved,
somehow, in an extrasensorial relationship with the world. Let me not pussyfoot around. I regard
Jungian synchronicity, indeed Jungian thought in general, as part of this retreat into magic. I
consider it to be regressive, illusory, irrational--a wishful step backwards as opposed to a realistic
step forwards. Accordingly, the book that follows is the product of my desire to be on the right side,
fighting the good fight. I have no idea, of course, what the outcome will be, but I do know how much
better it feels to participate than to look on. I welcome the reader's participation in this book.

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