Synchronicity and poststructuralism: C. G. Jung's secularization of the supramundane.

Abstract

The thesis argues that the ideological content of C. G. Jung's concept of synchronicity and particularly Jung's method of presenting synchronicity from 1928-1961 prefigure aspects of Michel Foucault's postmodern thought. Part 1 discusses issues of theory and method. Part 2 analyzes the various asides which Jung makes about synchronicity from 1928-1951, prior to his three formal works about synchronicity: "On Synchronicity" (1951); The Interpretation of Nature and the Psyche (with Wolfgang Pauli, 1952); and Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle (1952). Part 3 analyzes these formal works about synchronicity, as well as Jung's comments on synchronicity from 1953 to the time of his death in 1961. The primary method of Parts 2 and 3 is Michel Foucault's discourse analysis, as outlined in The Archaeology of Knowledge (1972). Part 4 critically compares Jung's concept of synchronicity to Foucault's later understanding of discourse theory, as described in Power/Knowledge (1972). This comparison explores the truth claims forwarded by each theorist among the analytical categories of knowledge, power, and subjectivity. I conclude that the concept of synchronicity and Jung's presentation of synchronicity prefigure a postmodern approach to theory and practice. Jung and Foucault both posit the ideas of (1) an intimate connection between the internal image and the external world (2) acausality and discontinuity (3) the relativity of truth, and (4) the fallacy of "objectivity." But Jung's contradictory belief in a transhistorical, absolute dimension to the self differs from Foucault's view that subjectivity is relative to the social discourses and discursive practices which create it. I also infer that Jung purposely legitimizes synchronicity with a postmodern style of argumentation because he is aware of the need to implement a "new" truth in an unreceptive social environment. The idea of the relativity of space and time which is explicit to synchronicity is not widespread and, in fact, quite foreign to the weltanschauung of the early to middle twentieth century--particularly in Jung's field of medicine. Regarding the heuristic value of synchronicity, several theorists use the concept to advance ideas about (1) the paranormal and (2) an anticipated paradigm shift of global consciousness, characterized by beliefs about the relativity of space and time and particularly by the idea that all thoughts, actions, and objects are essentially interconnected.