Do Coincidences Mean Anything? Exploring Carl Jung’s Notion of Synchronicity

We experience unlikely events and serendipities all the time, but often dismiss any further thought about them as unrealistic speculation. The tendency to disregard what we can’t explain is an age-old symptom of human nature. But what if the coincidences we experience do indeed have a meaning that is worth considering? If you have ever experienced a meaningful coincidence, then Carl Jung’s notion of synchronicity is the best reference to help you make sense of it.

As coined by prominent Swiss psychologist Carl Jung, the term synchronicity describes the simultaneous occurrence of two or more events that are not connected by causal factors, but by meaning. A synchronicity conjoins a subjective psychological state and an objective event. As Jung explains, it “consists of two factors: a) An unconscious image comes into consciousness either directly (i.e. literally) or indirectly (symbolized or suggested) in the form of a dream, idea, or premonition, b) An objective situation coincides with this content” (Jung, 1952). Effectively, a synchronicity constitutes a bridge between the inner and outer worlds. The connecting principle is not causal, but meaningful. 

To illustrate, imagine that you’re walking in the street one afternoon after meeting a loved one and you’re so immersed in thought, pondering whether this is love that you’re feeling. At this very moment, you hear a Bob Marley song playing from a nearby shop: “Is this Love? Is this love that I’m feeling?”. In this instance, your inner reality meaningfully coincided with the outer world without any causal mediation. Of course, synchronicities can be much more dramatic than this. As Jung notes, they can have a transformative and healing impact. 

What Is the Golden Scarab?

In Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle, Jung recounts the story of one of his patients whose desire for psychological transformation was hindered by her tendency to over-intellectualize. During one session, she told him about a dream where someone handed her a golden scarab, an Ancient Egyptian symbol of rebirth. Jung then heard a noise from the window behind him and saw a scarabaeid beetle fly into his office.

Both Jung and his patients were astonished, for the creature “was the nearest analogy to a golden scarab one can find in [their] latitudes, which, contrary to its usual habits had evidently felt the urge to get into a dark room at this particular moment” (Jung, 1952). This extraordinary experience allowed his patient to forgo the rigidity of her intellect and make real progress in her healing. 

Jung also narrates a synchronicity that the wife of one of his patients experienced. Upon the death of both her mother and grandmother, she saw a flock of birds gathered at the window of their death chambers. Years later, when his patient suffered from several health issues, his wife saw a flock of birds gathered around their house. Although his doctors said there was nothing to worry about, his wife felt extremely anxious at the sight of the birds. Indeed, her husband passed away later that day. 

Another synchronicity that Jung mentions in his book concerns the symbol of fish. During a period when he studied fish symbolism, particularly in Christianity, Jung experienced a series of wonderous synchronistic incidents. On April 1st, 1949, Jung wrote a Latin inscription of the word fish. Later that afternoon, he was served fish for lunch and somebody discussed the custom of ‘April fish’.

Later that day, Jung’s former patient, whom he hadn’t seen for years, showed him a painting she made of a fish. At night, somebody showed him an embroidery of fish-like creatures. The next day, another patient who hadn’t seen Jung for many years, told him about a dream where a large fish swam to her and rested at her feet. Jung emphasized that only one of the persons mentioned knew about his research. When he went to the lake to record all these coincidences that happened during such a short period of time, he found a big uninjured fish lying on the ground. 

Jung admits that these accounts will not “induce anybody who is determined to regard such things as pure “chance” to change his mind” and explains that he intends to simply illustrate how meaningful coincidences usually appear in practical life . What is worth exploring, however, is what the occurrence of such incidents says about the nature of our reality. Certainly, it seems to suggest that the strict division between our inner experience and outer reality is elusive. It also suggests that the world is not only governed by cause and effect, but also by meaning. Jung’s notion of synchronicity touches upon his theory of the collective unconscious – a shared layer of our psyche that consists of universal archetypes, symbols, and experiences through which we are all connected.

If we don’t dismiss our experience of synchronicity as a statistical anomaly and delve deeper into what it implies, we may discover that it reveals a deeper layer of reality where all things – the inner and the outer, self and other – are interconnected. As Jung remarked, “Synchronicity is an ever-present reality for those who have eyes to see” (Jung, 1952).