Synchronicity: Carl Jung’s attempt to establish ‘meaning’ scientifically

Type :

Term papers

Pages :

6 pages

Format :

.doc

Published date :

01/09/2009

Category :

Social studies

Sub category :

Psychology

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Summary :

Introduction.
Part 1.
1. 'Memories, Dreams, Reflections' by Carl Jung.
2. The sharp dividing line between my way of viewing psychology and Jungian psychology.
3. Jung on the question of truth regarding synchronicity.
4. Jung's favorite example of synchronicity.
5. The archetypes hypothesis.
Part 2.
1. Claire Douglas's book The Cambridge Companion to Jung.
2. Support for my theory of Jung compensating for neurosis.
3. The desire to compensate for childhood neurosis in Issac Newton's work.
4. Acusations of being a cultist.
Conclusion.

Abstract

When in his seventies, the Swiss psychologist extended his theory of the collective unconscious by throwing in synchronicity into the mix. This he did following a quarter of a century correspondence with the Nobel Prize winning physicist, Wolfgang Pauli. No longer was phenomena such as religion, science, narrative (etc) meaningful merely due to the fact that it had psychological origins and was our immediate experience... now such phenomena was also meaningful because inner and outer worlds were inextricably linked. (synchronicity!) And when inner experiences and outer experiences are experienced as linked there we experience a meaningful connection. meaning is virtually what jung is all about. It is true that there is a personal conscious/unconscious side to jung but the majority of his work concerns the psychology of religion east and west, archetypes, numinosity, synchronicity and all kinds of esotericism most notably alchemy and Gnosticism. The qualitative as well as the quantitative concerned jung... the irrational at least as much as the rational. Myths, fairy-tales, the paranormal all were greatly valued by jung and are referred to here simply to set the scene as jung as someone who was hell-bent on establishing a meaning-based dogma. synchronicity was an attempt (there were others) to establish meaning on scientific grounds. It was arguably his most interesting attempt from a neutral perspective