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                                       SYNCHRONICITY and PSYCHOTHERAPY

“One reason content is all-important in therapy is that the content of a human being  experience constitutes a good deal of what makes him a unique individual. Uniqueness in turn is a quintessential aspect of what constitutes a creation, because to be one of  a kind is to be truly new with respect to the world of events and objects.  One can be new  in relation to a particular context, or in relation to what one was before, but something unique is new in relation to the known universe. Consequently, content of therapy and of a particular human being’s experience is inextricably involved in the creative process.”

                                                                                              Albert Rothenberg M.D. ¹           

Still what Jung labeled as Freud’s concretistic terminology and personalistic view of

the unconscious manifests Freud’s awareness that authentic transcendental experiences

and insights [‘spirituality’] are anchored in the individuals’ personal life history and its

instinctual roots. Psychoanalysis, I believe, shares with modern existentialism the tenet

that superpersonal and transcendental aspects of human existence and unconscious and

instinctual life [so much stressed by Jung] can be experienced and integrated

convincingly – without escapist embellishments, otherworldly consolations and going off

into the clouds – only in the concreteness of one’s own personal life, including the

ugliness, trivialities, and sham that go with it. It would seem that Jungian psychology and

  psychotherapy jump all too readily from the here-and –now of individual life, from

concrete personal experience, to the collective unconscious myth, archetypes, religiosity,

 and “spirituality” – as refuge and healing visions to cling to, leading easily to evasions

 and hypocrisy instead of to genuine transcendence or in psychoanalytic terminology, to

sublimation and true ego expansion.”

Hans W. Loewald M.D. 2

OVERVIEW

The philosopher, William James, a pragmatist through and through, believed that ideas are a dime a dozen. For him, what makes one idea (theory) better than another is its “cash value” or practical usefulness. 3  Implied in the term ‘cash value’ is the assumption that while all ideas (theories) work for some persons, the selection of what theory to use at any specified time with a particular patient is which theory  works best. The criterion for ‘which works best’ is derived from the particular goal of treatment.

As a sample of one, this author has no doubt about the practical usefulness of his

naturalistic theory of synchronicities applied to understanding the nature of and uses put of  some synchronicity ‘material’ spontaneously reported by some patients.  However, to generalize these positive results to all of humanity is a grandiose leap. Thus, in the service of objectivity this chapter will apply Williams’ synchronicity theory in the course of his working with three 

synchronicity prone patients.

            Before discussing my work with some synchronicity prone patients I think it valuable to outline some notable differences between the Jungian supernatural perspective and my own naturalistic perspective.

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A Summary of   Williams’ Major Findings

Some Observations About Synchronicities

·         Synchronicities are markers of significant psychological change.

·         Synchronicities are markers of problem resolution in coded form.

·         The change associated with synchronicities is a greater cohesion of the self structure, and expansion of consciousness, a greater tolerance for ambivalence, and complexity, and a strengthening of the autonomous ego function of synthesis resulting in notable signs of integration of a person’s powers.

·         The ‘message’ embedded in the coded synchronicity is a self generated communication for the purposes of   furthering one’s self development in the areas of being and doing.

·         Synchronicities illuminate how a person generates his or her own meaningful connections as a byproduct of their developing awareness and utilization of what I refer to as “experiential” or “instinctual” logic.