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                         A THEORY and USE of MEANINGFUL COINCIDENCES:

                                                    (SYNCHRONICITIES)

The purpose of this paper is to scientifically investigate the phenomena of meaningful coincidences (synchronicities); specifically, to determine their nature and to delineate some purposes they serve – particularly as they occur in working with some patients receiving psychoanalytic psychotherapy. It is proposed that these apparently a –causal occurrences obey laws of psychodynamic causality and are therefore determined. Further that the principle issues associated  with synchronicities are those having to do with the development of the self as it naturally aspires to increasing expansion of individual consciousness. It is concluded that meaningful coincidences are the surface manifestations of an individuals’ creative process accommodating the ‘best’ available resolution of a  problem initially experienced as being trapped in a seemingly intractable  psychological dilemma. From this perspective, there is nothing mystical or divine about the origin of these anomalous events. While this analysis does rob the  ‘magic’ associated with only reacting to the surface; it nevertheless affirms a  wondrous appreciation for the creative capacities of each person to order his own internal and external chaos.

Implications for an Understanding of The Psychodynamics of Meaningful Coincidences

After rebutting Jung's three anti-causal arguments with my own points of view, I spelled out an alternative account of the psychodynamics of synchronistic events. In this connection, I made use of Spitz's concepts of psychic organizers particularly the smile response of the baby at about five months old; mirroring; overlapping of two modes of consciousness (durational timelessness and no spatial boundaries/linear time and bounded space); compromise formations utilizing Waelder's concept of the principle of multiple functions; Noy's concept of developing primary process - a hint as to how consciousness expands?; and Winnicotts' concepts of transitional phenomena, negotiating transitional space, and transitional objects. All of this flows together in the psychodynamics of the creative process.

            I concluded:

            What is seen in synchronistic events and the awe response is the deification of one's own psychological processes. This process is perceived as magical by those who are unable to feel validated as having a cohesive self (i.e., unable to make a meaningful connection with their own personal unconscious).

            For those individuals who have a cohesive self it is suggested that the psychological process leading to (the production of) synchronicities is experienced as synonymous with what is commonly called the creative process. Thus people with a cohesive self have synchronicities, but their experience of synchronicities is likely to be registered by them as a by-product of their own creative unconscious and conscious

I ended my paper with the following remarks:

            In this connection: the awe experience associated with experiencing meaningful coincidences is like the author of an epic play who somehow forgot he is the author and who in watching an enactment of his production exclaims in wonder: "Marvelous! I wonder who wrote that?" (R. Wittenberg, 1978, a personal communication). ¹