European Journal of Psychotherapy & Counselling

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Synchronicity and analysis: Jung and after

Roderick Main

To cite this article: Roderick Main (2007) Synchronicity and analysis: Jung and after, European
Journal of Psychotherapy & Counselling, 9:4, 359-371, DOI: 10.1080/13642530701725924

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 European Journal of Psychotherapy and Counselling,
December 2007; 9(4): 359–371

Synchronicity and analysis: Jung and after

RODERICK MAIN

Centre for Psychoanalytic Studies, University of Essex, UK

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Abstract
Although he was a psychiatrist and psychotherapist, C.G. Jung (1875–1961) did not
extensively present his novel concept of synchronicity (meaningful acausal connection)
in terms of clinical observations and reflections. It remained for subsequent analysts to
follow Jung’s pioneering work with more clinically focused discussions. In order to take
stock of some of the main trends within this work, this paper reviews, first, the
examples of synchronicity and related comments that Jung does give in association
with clinical contexts; and, second, a selection of mostly clinical papers that discuss the
relationship between synchronicity and analysis, written throughout the period
between the 1950s, when Jung’s essays on synchronicity appeared, and the present.
The review of the later clinical discussions focuses on questions of how frequently
synchronicities occur in analysis, what dynamics of the psyche are principally involved
in synchronicity, what are the clinical value and uses of synchronicity, and what is the
relationship between clinical and theoretical reflections on synchronicity.

Keywords: Synchronicity, Jung, analysis, clinical discussion, theory

Introduction
C.G. Jung’s (1875–1961) concept of synchronicity describes and theorises
those coincidences in which, for example, a person’s dream or thought is
matched by something that happens in the outer world, without it being
possible that either event could have caused the other, and where such
coincidences seem especially meaningful to their experiencers, who are

Correspondence: Roderick Main, Centre for Psychoanalytic Studies, University of Essex,

Wivenhoe Park, Colchester, CO4 35Q, UK. E-mail: [email protected]

ISSN 1364–2537 print/ISSN 1469–5901 online/07/040359–13 ß 2007 Taylor & Francis

DOI: 10.1080/13642530701725924
 360 R. Main

therefore prompted to wonder whether something more than mere chance

may be involved. Although Jung was a psychiatrist and psychotherapist, he did
not extensively present his thinking about such experiences in terms of clinical
observations and reflection. His clinical work forms just one, and by no means
the most prominent, context of his investigations in this area. At least as
important in his discussions of synchronicity are his interests in paranormal
experiences and spiritualism, philosophy, astrology, the I Ching, psychical
research and parapsychology, physics, and the history of religions and western
esotericism (see Main, 2004, pp. 66–90). Similarly, Jung’s major aims in
developing his concept of synchronicity were not primarily clinical. Insofar as
he reveals his aims, they are much broader than a concern for individual
therapy: they are to challenge scientific rationalism, to connect science to the
psyche and spirit and so promote a current of re-sacralisation in the modern
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world, and to forestall further instances of the kind of social and political
catastrophe that had had occurred especially in Europe during the 1930s and
1940s and that Jung believed were consequences of the excessive rationalisa-
tion and secularisation of modern culture (see Main, 2004, pp. 117–43). Of
course, all of Jung’s explorations into synchronicity, even his most esoteric,
were approaches to understanding the structure, dynamics and contents of the
unconscious psyche and, hence, were all pertinent to Jung’s professional work
as a psychotherapist. Similarly, his attempts in his thinking about synchro-
nicity to develop a critique of modern western culture were also implicitly
attempts to heal the individuals negatively influenced by that culture. But it
remains the case that the clinical dimension and influence of Jung’s work on
synchronicity have received less attention than they perhaps deserve. As a
contribution towards giving more attention to these aspects, the present paper
briefly reviews, first, the examples of synchronicity and related comments that
Jung gives in association with clinical contexts and, second, a selection of
mostly clinical papers that discuss the relationship between synchronicity and
analysis, written throughout the period between the 1950s – when Jung’s
essays on synchronicity appeared – and the present.

Synchronicity
Jung defined synchronicity in a variety of ways. Most succinctly, he defined it
as ‘meaningful coincidence’ (1952, par. 827); as ‘acausal parallelism’ (1963,
p. 407); or as ‘an acausal connecting principle’ (1952, par. 417). More fully,
he defined it as ‘the simultaneous occurrence of a certain psychic state with
one or more external events which appear as meaningful parallels to the
momentary subjective state’ (1952, par. 850). An example of Jung’s will
convey what he means by these definitions as well as how the concept of
synchronicity fits into his overall psychological model. The example concerns
a young woman patient whose excessive intellectuality made her ‘psycholo-
gically inaccessible’, closed off from a ‘more human understanding’ (1951,
par. 982). Unable to make headway in analysing her, Jung reports that he had
to confine himself to ‘the hope that something unexpected would turn up,
 Jung and after 361

something that would burst the intellectual retort into which she had sealed
herself’ (1951, par. 982). He continues:
Well, I was sitting opposite her one day, with my back to the window, listening to her flow of
rhetoric. She had had an impressive dream the night before, in which someone had given her a
golden scarab—a costly piece of jewellery. While she was still telling me this dream, I heard
something behind me gently tapping on the window. I turned round and saw that it was a fairly
large flying insect that was knocking against the window-pane in the obvious effort to get into
the dark room. This seemed to me very strange. I opened the window immediately and caught
the insect in the air as it flew in. It was a scarabaeid beetle, or common rose-chafer (Cetonia
aurata), whose gold-green colour most nearly resembles that of a golden scarab. I handed the
beetle to my patient with the words, ‘Here is your scarab’. This experience punctured the
desired hole in her rationalism and broke the ice of her intellectual resistance. The treatment
could now be continued with satisfactory results. (Jung, 1951, par. 982)

In this example, the psychic state is indicated by the patient’s decision to tell
Jung her dream of being given a scarab. The parallel external event is the
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appearance and behaviour of the real scarab. The telling of the dream and the
appearance of the real scarab were simultaneous. Neither of these events
discernibly or plausibly caused the other by any normal means, so their
relationship is acausal. Nevertheless, the events parallel each other in such
unlikely detail that one cannot escape the impression that they are indeed
connected, albeit acausally. Moreover, this acausal connection of events both is
symbolically informative (as we shall see) and has a deeply emotive and
transforming impact on the patient and in these senses is clearly meaningful.
Jung attempts to account for synchronistic events primarily in terms of his
concept of archetypes. For this purpose, he highlights the nature of archetypes
as ‘formal factors responsible for the organisation of unconscious psychic
processes: they are ‘‘patterns of behaviour.’’ At the same time they have a
‘‘specific charge’’ and develop numinous effects which express themselves as
affects’ (1952, par. 841). They ‘constitute the structure’ not of the personal
but ‘of the collective unconscious [. . .] psyche that is identical in all individuals’
(1952, par. 840; emphasis added). Also relevant is that they typically express
themselves in the form of symbolic images (1952, par. 845). Jung considered
that synchronistic events tend to occur in situations in which an archetype is
active or ‘constellated’ (1952, par. 847). Such constellation of archetypes in
the life of a person is governed by the process of individuation – the inherent
drive of the psyche towards increased wholeness and self-realisation.
Individuation in turn proceeds through the dynamic of compensation, whereby
any one-sidedness in a person’s conscious attitude is balanced by contents
emerging from the unconscious, which, if successfully integrated, contribute
to a state of greater psychic wholeness. Relating these psychological dynamics
to the example, Jung suggests that it has ‘an archetypal foundation’ (1952,
par. 845) and more specifically, that it was the archetype of rebirth that was
constellated. He writes that ‘Any essential change of attitude signifies a
psychic renewal which is usually accompanied by symbols of rebirth in the
patient’s dreams and fantasies. The scarab is a classic example of a rebirth
symbol’ (1952, par. 845). The emotional charge or numinosity of the
archetype is evident from its having ‘broke[n] the ice of [the patient’s]
intellectual resistance’. The compensatory nature of the experience is also
 362 R. Main

clear: her one-sided rationalism and psychological stasis were balanced by an

event that both in its symbolism and in its action expressed the power of the
irrational and the possibility of renewal. Finally, that all of this promoted the
patient’s individuation is implied by Jung’s statement that ‘The treatment
could now be continued with satisfactory results’. (For a more detailed critical
discussion of synchronicity and how it relates to analytical psychology, see
Main, 2004.)

Jung’s limited clinical discussion of synchronicity

Jung stated that, in his analytic practice, he was impressed both by the
frequency with which synchronistic phenomena occur and by their mean-
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ingfulness to those who experience them:

As a psychiatrist and psychotherapist I have often come up against the phenomena in question
and could convince myself how much these inner experiences meant to my patients. In most
cases they were things which people do not talk about for fear of exposing themselves to
thoughtless ridicule. I was amazed to see how many people have had experiences of this kind
and how carefully the secret was guarded. (Jung, 1952, par. 816)

In view of the importance that he clearly attached to them, it is surprising

how few clinical synchronicities are to be found in Jung’s work, and of these
few the scarab incident alone is analysed in any detail. Rather than treating the
clinical synchronicities he mentions as cases to be analysed, Jung generally
uses them as passing illustrations of theoretical or phenomenological points.
Nevertheless, we do gain from Jung’s writings a few insights into how, in his
experience, synchronicities can manifest, how he understands the psychic
background of synchronicities and how he used synchronicities in his clinical
work.
Regarding the way synchronicities manifest, Jung provides other explicit
examples where symbolic interpretation is needed in order to establish the
parallel between the events. One such example is the incident where the wife
of a patient of Jung’s became anxious at home just when her husband
elsewhere suffered a fatal collapse in the street. The immediate reason for her
anxiety was that a flock of birds had alighted on the roof of her house,
something that had previously happened on the deaths of her mother and
grandmother. Accordingly she associated flocks of birds with imminent death.
Jung later provided comparative mythological material to substantiate the
association of birds with death (1952, pars. 844–845). Here, without the
wife’s personal association, no synchronicity would have been recognised and,
without Jung’s mythological amplification, the personal association might
have seemed arbitrary. However, this is not to say that on other occasions the
synchronistic paralleling cannot be startlingly literal. For example, Jung once
consulted the I Ching with a young patient who feared his prospective
marriage partner might be domineering. The text of the hexagram obtained
from this consultation read: ‘The maiden is powerful. One should not marry
such a maiden’ (1963, p. 408).
 Jung and after 363

A frequent theme in the synchronicities Jung relates that have a clinical

reference is the apparent connection such incidents demonstrate between the
human psyche and the natural world. This is again evident in the scarab
incident, where the behaviour of an insect reflects what is being discussed
between analyst and analysand. Elsewhere, Jung describes a woman patient
who was attacked by birds whenever she was in the country, while her
companions (on one occasion, Jung) went unmolested (Aziz, 1990, p. 139).
Another woman, suffering from unconscious guilt at having murdered her
best friend out of jealousy, experienced the human and natural worlds turn
against her (Jung, 1963, pp. 143–145). And Jung was once walking in the
wood with a patient who was telling him about an important early dream of a
spectral fox. At that moment, a real fox came out of the wood and walked on
the path ahead of them for several minutes (Jung, 1973, p. 395). In another
case, a patient kept trying to explain her dreams symbolically in spite of their
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obvious sexual content and Jung’s sexual interpretation of them. At the next
appointment, ‘two sparrows fluttered to the ground at her feet and
‘‘performed the act’’’ (in McGuire & Hull, 1978, pp. 182–183).
Accounts of Jung’s synchronicities also sometimes provide glimpses into
how he made use of them in the clinical setting. Once more, the scarab
incident provides the richest detail. Additionally, we are told that when
analysing in his garden room by the lake, Jung would take the behaviour of
insects and the lake water as a synchronistic commentary on what was going
on in the analytic session (Aziz, 1990, pp. 85–86, citing Hannah 1977,
p. 202). Less idyllically, Philip Metman relates that when Jung’s dog vomited
twice in succession at the entry of a particular patient, Jung drew attention to
it as a comment on the analysis (1955, p. 49).
Jung notes a connection between transference and countertransference
phenomena and synchronicity. ‘The relationship between doctor and patient’,
he writes, ‘especially when a transference on the part of the patient occurs, or
a more or less unconscious identification of doctor and patient, can lead to
parapsychological [i.e. synchronistic] phenomena’ (1963, p. 159). By way of
illustration, he recounts how, one evening while staying in a hotel, he had felt
uncharacteristically restless and nervous (1963, pp. 136–137). During the
night he was awakened by a feeling of dull pain, as though something had
struck his forehead and then the back of his skull. He also had the impression
that someone had hastily opened the door and entered his room. The
following day he received news that one of his patients had shot himself,
learning later that the bullet had come to rest in the back of his patient’s skull.
Jung follows this account with further theoretical reflections on the nature of
synchronicity – its connection with archetypal situations (such as death) and
the relativisation of time and space in the unconscious. However, he does not
pursue further the connection with the dynamics of the transference.
The possibility of inexplicable unconscious communication is illustrated by
other incidents Jung relates. For example, he reports that, in his research, he
had repeatedly misread the word ‘Ericepaeus’ as ‘Ericapaeus’. The misread-
ing had lodged in his mind for thirty years. Then, within a month of eventually
discovering his error, a patient reported a dream involving the variant
 364 R. Main

misspelling ‘Ericipaeus’ (1952, par. 854). Jung introduces this incident

to illustrate how a ‘reading mistake’ can be involved in a synchronicity
(1952, par. 854). He does not comment on its possible significance within the
analysis of his patient. On another occasion, Jung and the members of a
seminar he was conducting on dream analysis were discussing the symbol of
the bull-god in relation to the dream of an analysand. Unaware of the
discussions of the seminar group, the analysand spent several days making a
picture of a bull with the disc of the sun between its horns (1928–1930,
pp. 43–45). Again, Jung does not discuss the significance of the incident for
the analysand, but uses it to illustrate how dreams are living things and can be
connected with coincidences (1928–1930, p. 44). In another, final example
Jung relates that he dreamed of a patient whose case he could not understand
but who he suddenly thought must have an unusual father complex. The
following day Jung had an appointment with a young woman whose problem,
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he eventually discovered, was that her grandfather had been a Jewish holy
man while her father rejected the faith (1963, pp. 160–161). In this case, Jung
does reveal how he turned his synchronistically obtained insight to account in
his anamnesis and how his subsequent intervention with the patient facilitated
a swift cure (1963, pp. 161–162). In each of the three cases, there appears to
be unconscious communication. But conscious boundaries are also trans-
gressed in other ways: between Jung the researcher and Jung the therapist in
the first case; between an individual therapeutic situation and a group
research discussion in the second case; and between before and after the
beginning of an analysis in the third case.
In sum, we have seen that Jung’s clinical discussions of synchronicity were
limited. He did not write a paper or substantial section of a paper dealing
specifically with clinical aspects of synchronicity, but makes his comments,
often in passing, either in the course of theoretical expositions (1951, 1952) or
in a variety of informal contexts (memoirs, interviews, letters, and reported
anecdotes). Nevertheless, within his scattered references to the topic he
indicates, albeit briefly, the role of archetypes, individuation, and symbolic
interpretation in synchronicities; the frequent involvement in synchronicities
of a connection between the psyche and the natural world; how, in general,
synchronicities can provide commentary on an analysis; their possible relation
to the dynamics of the transference and countertransference; and their
tendency to transgress the boundaries of the clinical situation in various ways.

Later clinical discussions of synchronicity

In order to gain a sense of how synchronicity has been understood and worked
with by later analysts, I will now briefly review a selection of papers published
between the time of Jung’s original writings on synchronicity and the present.
Most of these are clinical papers published in clinical venues (especially in the
Journal of Analytical Psychology). They are by Michael Fordham (1957, 1962),
Mary Williams (1957, 1963), Hans Dieckmann (1976), Rosemary Gordon
(1983), Carolin Keutzer (1984), Barbara Wharton (1986), Robert Hopcke
(1990), Nathan Field (1991), George Bright (1997), Joseph Cambray (2002,
 Jung and after 365

2004) and George Hogenson (2005). Although interesting clinical discussions

can be found elsewhere, particularly in several books (e.g. Bolen, 1979 and
especially Aziz, 1990, 2007), the clinical discussions included among the
papers I have selected provide sufficient material to make some preliminary
observations. Rather than review each paper chronologically, it has seemed
more helpful to discuss their contributions under four thematic headings: the
frequency of synchronicity in analysis; synchronicity and the dynamics of the
psyche; the clinical value and uses of synchronicity; and the relationship
between clinical and theoretical reflections on synchronicity. Also, for reasons
of space, it will not be possible to discuss here the details of how each of the
authors analyses actual synchronistic events. For these subtle and often
necessarily lengthy analyses the reader is referred to the articles
themselves. Here I will confine myself to marshalling and discussing some
of the general observations and insights that the authors have distilled from
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their material.

The frequency of synchronicity in analysis

One of the first questions on which we might hope for some illumination is
how frequently synchronistic events occur within, or in relation to, the clinical
context. But, at least on the surface, there is far from unanimity about this.
Jung, it will be recalled, was surprised by the number of synchronistic events
that came to his attention in his psychiatric and therapeutic work (1952,
par. 816). Fordham, by contrast, writes of ‘the relative rarity of analytic
observations [of synchronicity]’ (1962, p. 208). That he thinks this is a rarity
of actual occurrences as well as of observations is indicated by his troubling to
suggest a theoretical reason for the rarity (1962, cf. 1957, p. 48). However, as
Dieckmann reports, a research project carried out in Berlin to investigate the
unconscious interaction between analyst and patient revealed ‘an astonishing
increase in the phenomena of synchronicity’ when the researchers ‘started to
keep more accurate records of the subliminal perceptions of the analyst’
(1976, p. 27). Cambray, connecting synchronicity to the notion of emergence
in complexity theory, goes even further, suggesting that ‘synchronicity may be
a ubiquitous feature of clinical work’ (2004, p. 241). But Hogenson, also
drawing on complexity theory but with a different emphasis from Cambray,
concludes that ‘synchronistic phenomena are extremely rare, as Jung himself
argued, but they are not improbable in the sense one would assume to be the
case under more conventional probability theory’ (2005, p. 281).
It may be that the apparent difference of views on the frequency of
synchronicity in analysis stems from how closely and systematically the
analytic situation is being observed with the question of synchronicity in
mind. Dieckmann’s work, which suggests high frequency, was clearly more
focused in this respect than was Fordham’s, which suggests low frequency.
Again, the differences may stem from the different theoretical assumptions of
the authors. The ubiquity suspected by Cambray follows from his way of
re-framing synchronicity, in terms of complexity theory, as a form of order
emerging through self-organisation at the edge of chaos. For analysis is
 366 R. Main

precisely concerned with the psychological ‘edge of chaos’. Fordham, by

contrast, suggests that synchronicities tend to occur under conditions of
relative unconsciousness when there is a need for meaning to be discharged in
striking ways. Since, in analysis, the regression or abaissement du niveau mental
is handled in a more conscious and controlled way, Fordham suspects that, in
this clinical context, such striking discharges of meaning, as in synchronicities,
are less necessary (1962, p. 208; cf., 1957, p. 48). Again, it may be that
different authors simply have in mind different criteria of frequency or
different domains in which it is being sought. Hogenson, who acknowledges
that he has been inspired by Cambray’s work, finds rarity but not
improbability. But for Hogenson the rarely occurring synchronistic events
could be ubiquitous – as for Cambray – in any analytic work taking place with
material of a sufficient symbolic density.
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Synchronicity and the dynamics of the psyche

Most of the authors under review explicitly, and probably the others
implicitly, concur with Jung about the tendency for synchronistic events to
occur in relation to archetypal dreams and processes. For example,
Dieckmann’s Berlin research group found that synchronistic events were
observed ‘especially in sessions with archetypal dreams and of high emotional
stress’ (1976, p. 27). And Hopcke writes that ‘synchronistic moments of
intense emotion and openness’ often provide ‘living symbols’ through which
we can glimpse ‘the archetypal structures which undergird the psyche’ (1990:
469). Some of the writers draw attention to the role of synchronistic events in
the process of individuation (Cambray, 2004, p. 232; Hopcke, 1990, p. 461)
and their connection with the archetype of the self (Hogenson, 2005, pp. 278,
281; Hopcke, 1990, p. 465). Others note the numinosity (Fordham, 1957,
p. 44; Wharton, 1986, p. 285) and autonomy (Cambray, 2004, p. 242;
Gordon, 1983, p. 142) associated with both archetypal events and
synchronicities. All of this closely reflects Jung’s emphases in his analysis of
the scarab incident.
However, many of the reviewed writers also make connections to dynamics
of the psyche that were not so prominent in Jung’s discussions. Fordham, as
already noted, specially emphasises that synchronicities tend to occur when
there is a lack of consciousness (1957, pp. 49–50) (he originally presented this
as ‘a theory of [his] own’ but later found the view prefigured in a passage in
Jung. See 1957, p. 49). His view is qualified by Gordon who, while
acknowledging that increased consciousness is in many cases unfavourable to
the occurrence of synchronicity, argues that ‘It would [. . .] be misleading to
suggest that consciousness and synchronicity are always antagonistic to one
another’ (1983, p. 144). She provides an example from her own experience
where ‘a reference to the synchronicity in [the analytic] relationship helped to
create a greater consciousness’ (1983, p. 142). The apparent contradiction
here probably stems from the fact that Fordham discusses the conditions
in which synchronicity is likely to occur, while Gordon focuses more on
the effect a synchronicity can have. In broader developmental terms,
 Jung and after 367

synchronicity could be involved in both deconstructive and reconstructive

processes. Wharton, for instance, explores how synchronicity can facilitate
‘a deintegrative and reintegrative process for the patient’ (1986, p. 281).
Undoubtedly the most important psychic dynamic that subsequent
commentators have related to synchronicity much more fully than did Jung
is that of transference and countertransference. Fordham specifically notes of
Jung’s paradigmatic incident involving the scarab beetle that ‘the transference
implications are not considered’ (1962, p. 208). The frequent synchronicities
noted by the Berlin research group emerged while specific attention was being
paid to the transference and countertransference (1976). And Cambray
summarises that Jungian discussions of synchronicity have tended to fall into
two broad areas: one highlights their nature as ‘evidence of archetypal
processes at work’, while the other treats them as ‘commentary on the state of
the transference/countertransference relationship’ (2004, pp. 234–235).
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The clinical value and uses of synchronicity

Both as a principle and as an event, synchronicity has been found useful in
clinical contexts in a number of ways. At a general level synchronicity can
contribute to the analyst’s basic orientation and attitude. Williams, shortly
after Jung introduced the concept of synchronicity, recognised its importance
for helping analysts to orientate themselves in relation to anomalous events.
For example, she herself had once had to analyse a case replete with
poltergeist manifestations (Williams, 1963). Her worry was that – without an
adequate theory to account for them – analysts were liable to be blinded by
the ‘startling effect’ of such events and either to get caught up in them or to
protect themselves by depotentiating them (1957, p. 93). ‘Jung’s under-
standing of such phenomena’, she writes, ‘rescues them from the realms of
pre-logical thinking and animism and the dubiety of prophecy, and so helps
the analyst to orientate himself and the patient towards them’ (1957, p. 95).
Even more generally, Bright suggests that Jung’s concept of synchronicity,
with its implication that there exists a level of meaning that is objective yet not
fully knowable (1997, pp. 618–619), provides the basis for a distinctively
Jungian analytic attitude (1997, p. 614). In this attitude there is simultaneously
the expectation that meaning will be objectively found and the appreciation
that the meaning can never be fully uncovered and so will inevitably also be
subjectively created to some extent (1997, p. 618). Cambray reflects favourably
that the attitude elucidated by Bright ‘allows for enhanced tolerance of
uncertainty and increases capacity to grant a greater degree of autonomy to
unconscious processes as they occur in the clinical setting’ (2004, p. 242).
Many analysts have found synchronistic events to be ‘important sources of
information’ as well as providing ‘rare opportunities for powerful clinical
intervention and understanding’ (Hopcke, 1990, p. 460). Hopcke, for
example, suggests that ‘synchronistic events [. . .] often provide a kind of
‘‘feedback’’ about the archetypal processes at work in a way completely
analogous to the direct symbolic representations contained in dreams’ (1990,
p. 465). Keutzer, following Bolen (1979, pp. 37–48), notes that synchronistic
 368 R. Main

events can be analysed using the same techniques of amplification and

active imagination as are used in the Jungian interpretation of dreams
(Keutzer, 1984, p. 376). But Hopcke also makes the stronger point that
synchronicities ‘sometimes incarnate the archetypal processes at work in a way
more powerful than dreams, since such events are concretely experienced by
analyst and patient together in the room’ (1990, p. 472). This recalls Jung’s
comment about his scarab case that while the patient’s dream had been
enough ‘to disturb ever so slightly [her] rationalistic attitude’, it was only with
the synchronistic entry of the real scarab beetle that ‘her natural being could
burst through the armour of her animus possession and the process of
transformation could at last begin to move’ (1952, par. 845).
Several writers have noted the interconnections between the archetypal and
transference dimensions of synchronicity. Fordham, following Jung, assumes
that synchronicities are related to archetypes but notes that in any particular
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case the archetype present may be ‘hidden’ in the synchronicity. In such cases,
careful handling of the transference can enable this hidden archetype to come
under closer scrutiny (1957, p. 50). Hopcke likewise discusses how the
occurrence of a synchronistic event in analysis can be used to illuminate the
personal and archetypal symbolism of the transference/countertransference
relationship (1990, p. 473). Specifically, he notes that synchronicity can help
the analyst to differentiate between illusory and syntonic countertransference
(1990, pp. 470–471) and he provides an illustration from his own practice of
how a synchronistic event ‘both enacted and interrupted the unhelpful
countertransference into which [he] had fallen’ (1990, p. 467).
In terms of interpretation, Gordon suggests that synchronistic events can
themselves actually take over the function of the analyst’s interpretation in so
far as they can make an unconscious emotional experience explicit (1983,
p. 142). Bright, more broadly, considers that synchronicity provides the basis
for an approach to interpretation that supplements the search for causes,
goals, or subjectively agreed meanings with the assumption that meanings can
emerge in analysis which, although not fully knowable, are expressions of
objective reality rather than just inter-subjective creations (1997, p. 630).
Several writers have cautioned that synchronicity can be misused or
misinterpreted in a pathological way. Jung had already commented on this in
relation to situations where patients, particularly schizophrenics, interpret
events as having a special reference to them (1976, pp. 409–410). Fordham
similarly recognises the psychopathological use of coincidences in which a
significance belonging to one source is displaced to another (1957, p. 45).
And Cambray observes more generally that the ability to extract psychological
information from synchronicities ‘can be compromised by whatever patho-
logical structures and dynamics are operative in and around such events’
(2004, p. 237).

Clinical vis-à-vis theoretical reflections on synchronicity

Jung, as we saw earlier, only rarely – and never in detail – discussed the clinical
dimension of synchronicities. The bulk of his writing on the topic is
 Jung and after 369

concerned with theoretical issues. Much of the work I have been considering
is a corrective of Jung’s emphasis. Fordham, in particular, stresses the
importance of the clinical context. Like Jung, he is certainly interested in the
general theoretical problems posed by synchronicity, but he believes that,
even for gaining theoretical insight, it is more valuable to consider them
‘under the circumstances of analysis in relation to the individual’, for then it is
possible to observe in much greater detail ‘the circumstances of the event and
the psychological factors and dynamisms involved’ (1957, p. 50). However, in
spite of the great advantages of examining synchronicities in the clinical
context, Fordham cautions that the analyst’s main concern should always be
care for the patient and hence, unless attention to synchronicities furthers the
analysis, ‘For humane reasons it may be necessary to neglect the phenomenon
altogether’ (1957, p. 50).
For several writers, close clinical consideration of synchronicities has led
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back to theoretical reflection. For example, Field (1991) suggests that

understanding of synchronistic events, including the mysterious phenomenon
of projective identification, may require a shift to a ‘four-dimensional’
worldview based on the principle that connection among people is primary
and separateness secondary. Bright elaborates on the implications of
synchronicity for ‘a new approach to hermeneutics that removes the task of
imputing meaning from the conscious mind alone, and reformulates meaning
as a priori, a function of the unconscious, located in inanimate matter as well
as in mind’ (1997, p. 620). And Cambray (2002, 2004) and Hogenson (2005)
attempt to re-frame synchronicity in terms of complexity theory – a recent,
interdisciplinary theory unavailable to Jung. Cambray focuses on the
recognition that complex orders can emerge spontaneously when systems of
lesser complexity begin to dissipate at the edge of chaos (2004, p. 230), while
Hogenson links synchronicity to other key concepts of Jung’s by suggesting
that the association, the complex, the archetype, the synchronicity, and the
self ‘are self-similar moments in a scaling distribution characterized by [. . .]
symbolic density’ (2005, p. 278). Theoretical reflections such as these are
rarely undertaken for their own sake. Rather, many of the writers who pursue
possible theoretical implications of synchronicity are concerned to demon-
strate the clinical advantages of their suggested theoretical understanding
(see especially Bright 1997 and Cambray 2004).

Conclusion
Jung, who introduced the concept of synchronicity to psychotherapy, rarely
and only cursorily discusses its clinical dimension. We have seen, however,
that his pioneering work was followed by many much more clinically focused
discussions. These have greatly enriched appreciation of the relationship
between synchronicity and analysis. For the most part, though, these later
discussions should probably be seen as elaborations of Jung’s work rather than
departures from it. For most of the basic points explored by later writers – for
example, the connections of synchronicity to archetypal processes and the
transference/countertransference, the implications of synchronicity for
 370 R. Main

approaches to interpreting unconscious material and the relationship between

clinical and theoretical aspects of synchronicity – had already been
adumbrated in Jung’s main exposition or in his scattered statements.

Acknowledgements
Some of the material in this article appeared earlier in Roderick Main,
The rupture of time: Synchronicity and Jung’s critique of western culture (Hove and
New York: Brunner-Routledge, 2004).

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