Spiritual Synchronicity and Place: I. A Psychoanalytic Perspective

Spiritual Synchronicity and Place: I. A Psychoanalytic Perspective

This article is split into two parts over two consecutive issues of this journal to show a new dimension of the work of Slavoj Zizek, Gibbs Williams, and Jacques Lacan. Their work finds congruency to better understand Jung's spiritual philosophy of synchronicity (meaningful coincidence). We achieve this enhanced understanding by adding to our earlier work on place and psychoanalysis. We show that synchronicity is a form of self-transcendence, and stress the importance of place and Heidegger's analysis of temporality to comprehend why synchronicity occurs. This article is a significant contribution to the literature for theoretical and practical reasons. Our work will be vital for psychotherapists who encounter synchronicities in practice, as well as philosophers who wish to explain this mystifying phenomenon. Our investigation finds that synchronicities occur outside our causally determined symbolic reality and this sheds light on why Jung described this phenomenon as acausal (cf. cause and causality from Lacan). We argue that the 'event' of synchronicity can occur when humans undergo significant psychological change or restructure, providing a deepened and extended understanding of their place in the world. We believe this is one reason to explain why Jung, a psychoanalyst, was very knowledgeable about synchronicity as he helped deliver psychological change for the analysands who visited him. We add to this by showing its relationship to our philosophy of place.

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