Weak and Strong Synchronicity: I would also suggest another addition to (or perhaps modification) of Jung’s concept of synchronicity. I would differentiate between what I would call Weak Synchronicity and Strong Synchronicity. The weak form is manifest in the way we are attuned to specific events in our world because of the dynamics occurring in our psyche. There is the sparkle that we experience when some object or person in our outside world aligns with something that we are dwelling on inside ourselves. For instance, Lewis, Amini, and Lannon (2000) write about the limbic resonance (emotional attunement) that occurs when we are drawn to another person. Several events might be tied together because they similarly resonate. They make us feel honored, hopeful, or loved. Or, on a more negative side, they produce similar fear or sense of hopelessness or helplessness.
These weak connections can be strengthened if they frequently recur. While there might not be any causal connection between these events, they may have a long, well-established psychic connection based in part on their ongoing association with specific schema (Paul, 1966: Bartlett, 1995) such as a place of sanctuary and safety, or a pathway to success. The schema might, in turn, be affiliated with a specific archetype, thus giving it additional emotional charge and making the weak synchronicity that much more impactful (perhaps becoming a strong form of synchronicity).
While the Weak form of synchronicity can usually be captured with psychological terms such as limbic resonance and schemata, the Strong form of synchronicity holds a transcendent meaning that is definitely related to a specific archetype, as well as being expanded and reinforced by other elements (such as anima and animus) in the human psyche. Jung identifies several internal psychic structures as critical to many synchronistic occurrences. The archetype which I have mentioned often in this essay is frequently the meeting ground for several, seemingly independent events.
According to Jung (1960, p. 20):
“. . . archetypes are formal factors responsible for the organization of unconscious psychic processes: they are “patterns of behavior.” At the same time they have a “specific charge” and develop numinous effects which express themselves as affects. . . .[C]ertain phenomena of simultaneity or synchronicity seem to be bound up with archetypes.”
Thus, we see in the conceptions of Carl Jung the synthesizing of numinous, patterns (fractals), and synchronicity.
Attraction and Acausality: as I mentioned earlier, the numinostic experience acts as a strange attractor pulling in memories, feelings (affect), and events, much as an avalanche does in plummeting down a mountainside. Some of the events being pulled in might not have a “causal” relationship with one another; however, they have an acausal, synchronistic relationship because they have been drawn into the numinous. I would similarly suggest that acausal events might appear connected because they are both passengers on George Klein’s ideational train. This train may be quite long, carrying many synchronic events and images.
The train, or at least the domain of synchronicity, might be connected not just to specific moments in time, but also to a broader spectrum of expanded space. “Synchronicity,” according to Progoff (1973, p. 161), “may occur in the universe on all its levels, but implicit in its definition as involving meaningful coincidence is the presence of an organ of meaning that is an inherent part of each synchronistic event.” Acausally connected events will have great power. It relates, as Ira Progoff mentions, to our sense of personal and collective identity.
