Synchronicity

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Synchronicity (German: Synchronizität) is a concept introduced by analytical psychiatrist Carl Jung to describe events that coincide in time and appear meaningfully related, yet lack a discoverable causal connection.^[1] Jung held this was a healthy function of the mind, that can become harmful within psychosis.^[2][3]

Jung developed the theory as a hypothetical noncausal principle serving as the intersubjective or philosophically objective connection between these seemingly meaningful coincidences. After coining the term in the late 1920s^[4] Jung developed the concept with physicist Wolfgang Pauli through correspondence and in their 1952 work The Interpretation of Nature and the Psyche.^[5][6][7][8] This culminated in the Pauli–Jung conjecture.^{[9][10][11][12][13]} Jung and Pauli's view was that, just as causal connections can provide a meaningful understanding of the psyche and the world, so too may acausal connections.^[14]

A 2016 study found 70% of therapists agreed synchronicity experiences could be useful for therapy. Analytical psychologists hold that individuals must understand the compensatory meaning of these experiences to "enhance consciousness rather than merely build up superstitiousness". However, clients who disclose synchronicity experiences report not being listened to, accepted, or understood. The experience of overabundance of meaningful coincidences can be characteristic of schizophrenic delusion.^[15] On the other hand some studies suggest association between experiencing more meaningful coincidences and creativity.^[16] Thor Johansen and Nazia Iram Osman write that "prevalent among many scientists, particularly psychologists, studying coincidences, is [the view] that the occurrence of coincidences, as psychologically experienced, is induced by noisy chance occurrences out in the world which are then misconstrued via irrational cognitive biases into unfounded, possibly even paranormal, beliefs in the mind." A study has shown counselors and psychoanalysts were less likely than psychologists to agree chance coincidence was an adequate explanation for synchronicity, while more likely than psychologists to agree that a need for unconscious material to be expressed could be an explanation for synchronicity experiences in the clinical setting.

Jung used synchronicity in arguing for the existence of the paranormal.^[17] This idea was explored by Arthur Koestler in The Roots of Coincidence^[18] and taken up by the New Age movement. Unlike magical thinking, which believes causally unrelated events to have paranormal causal connection, synchronicity supposes events may be causally unrelated yet have unknown noncausal connection. The objection from a scientific standpoint is that this is neither testable nor falsifiable, so does not fall within empirical study.^[19] Scientific scepticism regards it as pseudoscience. Jung stated that synchronicity events are chance occurrences from a statistical point of view, but meaningful in that they may seem to validate paranormal ideas. No empirical studies of synchronicity based on observable mental states and scientific data were conducted by Jung to draw his conclusions, though studies have since been done (see § Studies). While someone may experience a coincidence as meaningful, this alone cannot prove objective meaning to the coincidence. Statistical laws or probability, show how unexpected occurrences can be inevitable or more likely encountered than people assume. These explain coincidences such as synchronicity experiences as chance events which have been misinterpreted by confirmation biases, spurious correlations, or underestimated probability.^[20][21]