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 s [ 4 ] Jung developed the concept with physicist Wolfgang Pauli through correspondence and in their work The Interpretation of Nature and the Psyche. 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. Jung used synchronicity in arguing for the existence of the paranormal. 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. 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.
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.
Synchronicity arose with Jung's use of the ancient Chinese divination text I Ching. It has 64 hexagrams , each built from two trigrams or bagua. A divination is made by seemingly random numerical happenings for which the I Ching text gives detailed situational analysis.
