While Freud was going on this way, I had a curious sensation. It was a — Synchronicity

"As they entered the house intending to remove the unfortunate man against his will to a clinic, the lamp in the corridor shattered with a bang, so that suddenly they were all standing in darkness in the midst of the broken glass. The patient saw clearly that what had happened was a supernatural sign: just as the sun grew dark when Christ was crucified, this event was to him a confirmation that he was a savior who was being unjustly arrested. We, on the other hand, would say that he had projected his delusion into the event. Thus the synchronistic phenomenon, in itself meaningful, was instead covered up by a projection. To a person with normal consciousness the "meaning" of the occurrence would be quite different. A lamp, in contrast to the sun, is not a cosmic principle but an appliance invented by man; it usually symbolizes ego-consciousness in dreams and fantasies. The meaning of the unusual event would then more probably be expressed thus: In the moment of intense agitation caused by his imminent arrest the patients ego-consciousness was shattered and a mental blackout resulted. The patient, however, could not grasp this meaning.[...] Hence synchronistic events occur with conspicuous frequency at such times (although they also occur with normal people when an archetype is activated)."

"Weve all had the experience of talking about a long-lost friend with someone, and then out of the blue the phone rings and its that same long-lost friend. Famous psychobabble quack Carl Jung called these occurrences "synchronicity." Skeptics regard these synchronicities events as mere coincidences. Others posit a pie-in-the-sky cosmic connection linking all things. Take a guess on which side of the argument I fall."

"Your question concerning synchronicity and ideas of reference is very interesting indeed. I have often found that synchronistic experiences were interpreted by schizophrenics as delusions. Since archetypal situations are not uncommon in schizophrenia, we must also suppose that corresponding synchronistic phenomena will occur which follow exactly the same course as with so-called normal persons. The difference lies simply and solely in the interpretation. The schizophrenics interpretation is morbidly narrow because it is mostly restricted to the intentions of other people and to his own ego-importance. The normal interpretation, so far as this is possible at all, is based on the philosophic premise of the sympathy of all things, or something of that kind. [...] If synchronicities occur in these cases it is because an archetypal situation is present, for whenever archetypes are constellated we find manifestations of the primordial unity. Thus the synchronistic effect should be understood not as psychotic but a normal phenomenon."

"One can see here the probable origin of the legend of the Pauli effect. This was a kind of spell he was supposed to cast on people or objects in his neighbourhood, particularly in physics laboratories, causing accidents of all sorts. Machines would stop running when he arrived in a laboratory, a glass apparatus would suddenly break, a leak would appear in a vacuum system, but none of these accidents would ever hurt or inconvenience Pauli himself. At one reception this Pauli effect was to be parodied, and a chandelier had been suspended carefully by a rope which was to be released when Pauli entered, causing the chandelier to crash down. But when Pauli came, the rope became wedged on a pulley and nothing happened—a typical example of the Pauli effect!"

"My example concerns a young woman patient who, in spite of efforts made on both sides, proved to be psychologically inaccessible. The difficulty lay in the fact that she always knew better about everything. Her excellent education had provided her with a weapon ideally suited to this purpose, namely a highly polished Cartesian rationalism with an impeccably "geometrical" idea of reality. After several fruitless attempts to sweeten her rationalism with a somewhat more human understanding, I had to confine myself to the hope that something unexpected and irrational would turn up, something that burst the intellectual retort into which she had sealed herself. Well, I was sitting opposite of her one day, with my back to the window, listening to her flow of rhetoric. She 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 from outside in the obvious effort to get into the dark room. This seemed to me very strange. I opened the window and immediately and caught the insect in the air as it flew in. It was a scarabaeid beetle, or common rose-chafer, whose gold-green color most nearly resembles that of a golden scarab. I handed the beetle to my patient with the words "Here is your scarab." This broke the ice of her intellectual resistance. The treatment could now be continued with satisfactory results."

"There are certain caveats when it comes to considering synchronicity in the light of creative possibilities. First, we cannot force a synchronicity, nor can we expect to find one on command. Ascertaining the difference between a true synchronicity and a psuedo-coincidence is the goal of forming good criteria. Second, we must always beware of "reading into" things and relying exclusively on personal, subjective meanings. In other words, some events may truly be synchronicity. Recognizing them and their significance can be highly beneficial. But attempting to see synchronicity in each and every event in our life is an almost certain prescription for paranoia and delusional pathology."