ACAUSAL CONNECTIONS IN ANALYTICAL PSYCHOLOGY AND MODERN PHYSICS: QUANTUM ENTANGLEMENT AND SYNCHRONICITY

Let’s explore the fascinating overlap between contemporary physics and one of Jung’s most significant ideas, probing riddles as diverse as the fate of Schrödinger’s cat, whether there are hidden variables, and the nature of the collective unconscious.

In the opening paragraph of his 1952 essay on synchronicity, Jung writes that modern physics has shattered our worldview, replacing causal certainty by statistical truths. There is a need to posit other types of connection that are not part of the system of natural laws, to explain what we see around us. Jung proposed synchronicity as a principle of connection arising from psyche’s search for meaning. There are parallels to this psychological hypothesis in quantum physics. For a century, physicists have wrestled with the question of what makes the reality we perceive, given that quantum descriptions are indefinite. Spatially separated events may be correlated, without the possibility of causation. It turns out that at a microscopic level, objects are not separate but inextricably entwined, part of a Unus Mundus.

PETER HOLLAND, MD is a psychiatrist in private practice in Aptos and an analyst member of the C.G. Jung Institute of San Francisco. He has given presentations on topics to do with the overlap of analysis, culture, and the history of science and mathematics. Before entering his present profession he was a graduate student in theoretical physics, and has an ongoing interest is making connections between quantum mechanics and Jungian psychology.