137 - Arthur I. Miller [96]
Pauli was uncomfortable with this. He pointed out to his friend, the scientist Markus Fierz, who was assisting Jung with statistical calculations on his astrological data, that Jung had not included the effect of irrational factors entering from Jung’s own unconscious and that of his co-workers. “It’s a curious thought that it is we physicists who have to call the attention of the psychologists of the unconscious to this,” he wrote. In the published version of his experiment Jung admitted as much, giving instances where his state of mind and that of his co-workers affected the way in which they constructed the horoscopes. Sadly, his results did not bode well for constructing a scientific basis for astrology. Small samples, however, produced good results, which Jung interpreted as demonstrating the predominance of archetypes from astrology: even though people think they are consciously choosing their partners, in fact they are not. Just as when one consults the I Ching and in Rhine’s ESP experiments there is no cause-and-effect connection. Jung was the eternal optimist.
In 1949 Pauli wrote to Fierz:
May this now be a good omen as regards my relationship with physics and psychology, which undoubtedly is among the peculiarities of my intellectual experience. What is decisive to me is that I dream about physics as Mr. Jung (and other nonphysicists) think about physics. The danger of this situation lies in Mr. Jung publishing nonsense about physics and could moreover quote me in the process. The thing is to prevent this and to turn the matter to advantage. I simply cannot evade it! But every time I have talked to Mr. Jung (about the “synchronistic” phenomenon and such), a certain spiritual fertilization takes place.
Pauli was worried that his reputation might suffer if Jung published material on physics that made no sense and that quoted him as confirmation. But their conversations were far too fruitful to dream of abandoning them. Above all he was gripped by the notion of finding a link between quantum physics and psychology—which surely lay in synchronicity.
The scarab and the birds
Wrestling with the concept, Pauli discovered that he found it useful to make a distinction between chance occurrences of synchronicity and occurrences of synchronicity brought about by consulting oracles such as the I Ching. For chance occurrences he used the term “meaning-correspondence” rather than “synchronicity,” which Jung tended to use synonymously with “simultaneity.”
In reply, Jung brought to his attention two examples of synchronism in which he was able to identify “some archetypal symbolism at work…which cannot be explained without the hypothesis of the collective unconscious.”
The first concerned a woman patient whose animus (that is, her male aspect, the female equivalent of the male anima) clung to a stubbornly logic-based view of reality. She had already been to two analysts before Jung. He was having no success either until one day she told him about a dream of a scarab she had had. At that same moment Jung heard a tapping on the windowpane. He flung open the window and an insect flew in. Jung caught it. It was of the scarab family. To Jung this was not a chance happening but a meaningful coincidence. The patient had been disturbed by the dream scarab and the sudden appearance of a real one completely shattered her stubbornly rational attitude. The scarab bursting in through the window allowed her animus to burst its logical chains and place her on the path to psychic renewal—entirely appropriate, said Jung, given that the scarab is an ancient Egyptian symbol of rebirth. It was an example of a psychic state in the observer coinciding with an external event that corresponded