Synchronicity: Nature and Psyche in an Interconnected Universe

Joseph Cambray

College Station, TX: Texas A & M University Press, 2009, 160 pp.

Joseph Cambray is the President-elect of the International Association for Analytical Psychology, a consulting editor of the Journal of Analytical Psychology, as well as co-editor of the anthology, Analytical Psychology: Contemporary Perspectives in Jungian Analysis. As this impressive list of credentials suggests, he is no stranger to Jungian theory or practice.

If your interest in synchronicity tends towards the spiritual, you will discover in this book that there are other ways in which synchronicities can be experienced. Instead of telling stories about remarkable experiences of coincidence affecting individuals for good or ill, Cambray has chosen to extend and elaborate the concept of synchronicity to include recent advances and discoveries in the sciences of physics, neuroscience and even cultural history. Other authors writing about synchronicity have made it clear that the coincidence and “synchrony” — the happening together in time — have to do with parallels between inner and outer experiences. Cambray picks up this theme and develops it in various ways, especially from the points of view of symmetry and mirroring.

He argues that human beings have a particular response to symmetry, be it to the mirror symmetry of a butterfly’s wings, the pleasing form of a symmetrical human body, or the geometric satisfaction of a circle, cube or pyramid. Symmetry pleases us aesthetically; it attracts and impresses us. It jumps out at us from a background. In short, it gets our attention and holds it.

Cambray delves into the science of symmetry in biology and physics. He considers how mandalas and matrixes are often used to represent the structure or experience of the numinous archetype of Self. In the theory of the archetypes he sees the symmetrical relationship of the inner, universally human structures which are experienced by individuals in the outer world of their personal lives.

The author, however, does not allow us to remain smugly satisfied with the aesthetic pleasure of symmetry. He opens out the question of how the inner can create the outer by considering psyche and the world as complex systems with self-organizing properties. He draws examples of emergent self-organizing processes from the domains of neuroscience and cognitive and attachment theory, as well as from psychoanalytic and consciousness studies.

A central theme of this book is the relationship of synchronicity and symmetry and the way that “emergent properties” evolve out of symmetrical systems by destabilizing them. Cambray writes: “Initial felt symmetry is a powerful inducement to attend to such events — but psychological development requires that we suffer awareness of the asymmetry.” (p. 65)

This is a theme that he continues to develop as the book progresses. In a chapter about empathy he offers us the latest research on mirror neurons. Mirror neurons are called that because they lie parallel to our motor neurons, but unlike the motor neurons which fire in order to send action signals to our muscles, mirror neurons fire when we see another person make a gesture or movement. Scientists currently believe that mirror neurons are at the root of our human ability to enter empathically into another person’s experience and are necessary to understand another person’s intentions.

Cambray points out that patterns of mirror neurons of necessity develop out of social relationships with other human beings and that their existence means that on a microscopic, neurological level we actually feel what our fellows are feeling. He reflects on the fact that empathy is at the root of maternal care and is a basic element in psychotherapeutic treatment, but that, as Winnicott pointed out, the good-enough mother or therapist has to fail in their perfectly (symmetrically) attuned behaviour for the infant or client to develop their own strength and ability to care for themselves. In this way he reiterates his observation that development evolves out of disruption of symmetry.

Cambray extends his thesis into the cultural sphere by reflecting on the development of democracy in ancient Athens, particularly the use of consensus in decision-making. He sees a parallel between synchronicity and consensus in that the feeling of consensus can be experienced as a naturally arising “symmetrical” feeling of rightness and agreement between persons — a feeling of accord that could sometimes be described as “numinous.” He points out, however, that this feeling has its shadow aspect in that conscious reflection and discernment need to be brought into the experience so that the feeling of “unity of intention” does not turn into dangerous mob behaviour.

He further explores the shadow aspect of synchronicity in the case of the Spanish conquest of Mezo-America. Recent historical research suggests that Cortez was able to overcome Moctezuma despite his inferior numbers because his arrival, from the point of view of the Aztecs, was a synchronicity. Aztec religion had described the eventual return of their legendary god Quetzalcoatl. The striking coincidences between the descriptions of the anticipated return of the god and the actual arrival of the Spanish struck fear into the hearts of the indigenous population and their rulers and undermined their willingness to fight.

Reflecting on this historical situation, Cambray reminds us that there can also be pathological responses to synchronistic events when the individual loses himself unreflectively in the experience. He asks us to recognize the tendency to misuse the experiences of synchronicity and coincidence to enhance a personal feeling of grandiosity or power. Cambray reminds us of our personal responsibility for reflection in the face of synchronicity and of Jung’s caution that activated unconscious material requires a conscious response to assess the moral implications which are essential to psychologically mature reactions.

Cambray’s book offers a different view of synchronicity than Jungian readers are used to encountering and his cutting-edge research and scholarship in physics, neuroscience and cultural history make this book a fine extension and contribution to the synchronicity literature.

—Susan Meindl