Week Twelve: Literature Review #5

By analyzing Carl Jung's literature, 
the synchronicity theory can be
understood directly from the source
 in order to use its explanation in order to
begin to describe the deja vu phenomenon.

    My final literature review will focus on the cases provided by Carl Jung himself, which he used in order to describe synchronicity and how it is very easy for an experiencer to determine that the coincidental events are connected, rather than occurring by chance. These examples and historical connections are provided in Carl Jung's book Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle, in the appendix on synchronicity located at the end of the text. These connections are important because they provide situations in which the synchronicity theory can be easily understood. These instances will be supplemental to my explanation of synchronicity, as they make the complex and subjective theory much more understandable. The first instance in which Jung uses past experiences to explain the synchronicity phenomenon is as follows:

    "My friend thereupon dreamed that he was walking through a Spanish city. The street led to a square, where there was a Gothic cathedral. He then turned right, around a corner, into another street. There he was met by an elegant carriage drawn by two cream-colored horses. Then he woke up [...] Shortly afterward, having successfully passed his examinations, he went to Spain, and there, in one of the streets, he recognized the city of his dream. He found the square and the cathedral, which exactly corresponded to the dream-image. He wanted to go straight to the cathedral, but then remembered that in the dream he had turned right, at the corner, into another street [...] Hardly had he turned the corner when he was in reality the carriage with the two cream-coloured horses" (Jung 106).

This quote is extremely important to my analysis of Jungian ideas not only due to its concrete explanation of an event in which coincidences were improbably tied to both dream material and reality, but also because it provides a concrete example of deja vu. This story told by Carl Jung highlights the connections between misattributions of clairvoyance with the subconscious storage and retrieval of memories of dream material, which in turn causes a false recollection episode. Carl Jung touches upon how deja vu can be connected to dream material, stating:

    "The sentiment du deja vu is based, as I have found in a number of cases, on a foreknowledge in dreams [...] [in cases like the one of the friend in the Spanish city] mere chance becomes highly improbable because the coincidence is known in advance" (Jung 106).

This concrete connection between deja vu and synchronicity by the creator of the theory himself is vital to my argument because it shows that the connections between synchronicity and deja vu are valid. Jung states that foreknowledge is a root of deja vu, just as I have analyzed in the last section of my essay, proving that dream material exists in subconscious memory and can easily be attributed to real-life events, thus creating an illusion of clairvoyance, or seeing into the future. By analyzing this connection between dreams and deja vu, the episodes that persist in patients with anxiety can be debunked and hopefully less anxiety will be reduced by the phenomena, as patients will become aware that their deja vu is fueled simply by similar dream events. 

    Another common theme that Carl Jung makes connections to is the presence of symbols that can reflect past events or thoughts. In this case, which was also experienced by Jung himself, a patient described having a dream about a specific piece of jewelry, and while explaining this dream to Jung, a beetle whose color is the same as the color of this piece of jewelry tapped on the window:

    "[The patient] had an impressive dream the night before, in which someone had given her a golden scarab--a costly piece of jewelry. While she was still telling me this dream, I heard something behind me gently tapping on the window [...] I opened the window immediately and caught the insect in the air as it flew in. It was a scarabaeid beetle [...] whose gold-green colour most nearly resembles that of a golden scarab" (Jung 109).

Such a striking connection of events seemed to be a coincidence that has such high improbability that is must have some sort of significant meaning, but Jung still refuses to name these occurrences as directly related. He evaluates this occurrence by naming it as a coincidence only significant to himself and his patient, since they had made themselves consciously aware of the jewelry and the unrelated insect's color was then consciously connected to this past dream. By making the connections on their own, the two experiencers created a synchronicity in their minds--if they hadn't described the dream material in the office, then Jung would have never noticed any connection between the beetle and the patient's past dream. Thus, the synchronicity phenomenon is one that is created only in the mind of the experiencer, and has no true meaning or concrete connections between events. 

    Carl Jung is the most credible source for information regarding synchronicity because he himself is the creator of the synchronicity theory. By obtaining information directly from Jung, the most-accurate interpretation of the phenomenon can be used in order to explain how deja vu is subjective and is motivated by the human consciousness.

    Some key terms I discovered within Jung's text include:

1. synchronistic - the coincidence of a future-predicting state with an event that occurs outside of the experiencer's field of perception or that occurs in a distant event, which can only be determined as coincidental after this distant event has occurred.

2. synchronous - the coincidence of a clairvoyant state with an event that occurs at the same time as the connection is created, and can be determined as coincidental as the event occurs.

    My citation for this piece is as follows:

Jung, C. G. “Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle.” Synchronicity, Princeton

        University Press, 2015, pp. 1–2, doi:10.1515/9781400839162-003.