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For many years Jung has been observing the striking phenomenon that events in the lives of his patients sometimes coincide altogether unexpectedly with their psychological state. Such occurrences are immediately perceived by the subject to be meaningful in that they imply a condition of correspondence between the outer and the inner world. Jung calls this phenomenon “synchronicity” and distinguishes it from causality which is the basis of “natural laws”. As contrasted with the latter, synchronicity is relatively independent of the limitations of space and time. Analysts are well aware of such phenomena which are often called telepathic and are relegated to the field of parapsychology. Other people too—when they can be persuaded to give up their superstitious awe—can report observations of this kind. For Jung the investigation of these phenomena became a matter of scientific conscience and the present essay summarizes, however tentatively, his conclusions. And very far-reaching they are, extending well beyond the borders of psychology into the field of nuclear and quantum physics. While synchronicity in the narrower sense refers to the coinciding of inner and outer events connected by meaningfulness (but not due to it!), in the wider sense the term refers to a universal factor conceived as “acausal orderedness” which, Jung asserts, is contingent upon an archetypal background. Jung gives so many connections which this new concept has with its forerunners in antique, classical and mediaeval times, and further demonstrates so much clinical material in a relatively short essay, that it is difficult to do justice to this work by an attempted summary. Suffice to refer to the relation this term has to mantic procedures (I-Ching) and to the problem of body-soul relationship.
The original Swiss edition (Zürich, Rascher Verlag, ) of Jung's contribution to the book Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle has been revised by the author and material has been added and re-ar