Journal of Analytical Psychology, 1997, 42, 613-635 Synchronicity as a basis of analytic attitude George Bright, London Abstract: My aim is to describe Jung’s approach to the experience of the chaotic, which could equally be termed the irrational, the non-ego, the unordered or prima ‘materia, and to extract from this a clinical approach to the analytic patient which, in Jung’s own writings, is often more implicit than explicit. My interest in this enq arises from the clinical experience of the unconscious in the form of transference/ countertransference, involving relentless pressure on both analyst and analysand to attempt to impute meaning and order. I examine Jung’s work ‘Synchronicity: an acausal connecting principle’ and extrapolate from it what I think to be its unique contribution to hermeneutics - the ontologically-based concept of a psychoid understanding of meaning and pattern. In the second part of the paper, I discuss the application to analytic work of Jung’s hermeneutic approach. I look at how analysts relate to meaning in terms of their relationship to theory. I illustrate this by comparing two short psychoanalytic papers on aggression, an instinct which is often seen as engendering splitting and which tends therefore to promote the dissociations which Jung was trying to address in ‘Synchronicity’. I then illustrate with clinical material how Jungian analysts might relate to meaning in their approach to the patient. Together, these form the basis of what is commonly called ‘analytic attitude’, which I see as the basis for a distinctively Jungian identity for analytic practice. Key words: Synchronicity, analytic attitude, hermeneutics, psychoid, causality, aggression. Introduction A baby kicks in the womb; it cannot be assumed he is trying to kick his way out. A baby of a few weeks thrashes with his arms; it cannot be assumed he means to hit. A baby chews the nipple with his gums; it cannot be assumed that he is meaning to destroy or to hurt. {Winnicott 1987, p. 204) At the beginning of his paper ‘Aggression in relation to emotional develop- ment’ Winnicott asks us to refrain from attributing meaning to a baby’s act. In so doing, he challenges one of the most common tensions encountered in analytic work. At a theoretical level, this is familiar to us as the tension between analysis as a scientific activity, searching for cause, and analysis as a hermeneutic activity, searching for meaning. Clinically, the problem may 0021-8774/97142041613 © 1997, The Society of Analytical Psychology614 G. Bright feature every time we formulate those guesses or assumptions which we call interpretations, in as far as they arise from the internal and external pressure on the analyst to make rational sense of what is going on in the consulting- room. Jung argues frequently for a deliberate refraining from ordering, so as to tolerate as much as possible within the analysis the chaotic or prima materia states. He argues that the danger in all ordering is that of dissociation, and that ‘psychic dissociation, as we know, lies at the root of the psychogenic psychoses and neuroses’ (Jung 1955b, para. 494). My aim in this paper is to describe Jung’s theoretical approach to the experience of the chaotic —- which we could equally term the irrational, the non-ego, the unordered or the prima materia - and to extrapolate from this a clinical approach which in Jung’s writings is more implied than explicit. My interest in this enquiry arises from the daily clinical experience of the unconscious in the form of transference and countertransference, with its continuous pressure on both analyst and analysand to attempt to understand; that is, to build bridges between I and not-I, between chaos and order, between unconscious and conscious, or supremely between Self and ego. In the first part of the paper I trace a salient through Jung’s work ‘Synchron- icity an acausal connecting principle’ (Jung 19554) in which he investigates a way of connecting that tries not to do violence to the material through crude, potentially dissociative attribution of cause. The paper argues, among other things, for a way of explaining without explaining away; but Jung goes further, to elaborate an ontologically-based argument about connecting on a basis of meaning, without attributing cause and effect, and it is this line of argument and investigation that has, I think, greater clinical relevance for the analyst than has generally been recognized. In the second section, I attempt to illustrate the clinical application of Jung’s thesis by looking at how analysts relate to meaning in terms of our relationship to the theories we use; and then at how analysts relate to meaning in our approach to the patient. Together, these form the basis of what is commonly known as ‘analytic attitude’, which I take to be the basis of analytic work and clinical identity; and I argue that the principles formu- lated in ‘Synchronicity’ provide the basis for a distinctively Jungi-a analytic attitude. To elucidate this attitude, I compare two theoretical texts on aggression, an instinct which often promotes splitting as the personality tries to re-integrate it, and therefore an instinct which tends to promote the dissociation which Jung’s work in ‘Synchronicity’ was trying to address. Jung’s approach to meaning and pattern in ‘Synchronicity: an acausal connecting principle” In this work, Jung sets out theoretically what he means by his neologisms ‘synchronicity’ (first coined in 1930) and ‘psychoid’ (1946). His subject isSynchronicity as a basis of analytic attitude 615 the understanding of human experience, and he argues that neither the scientific nor the hermeneutic approach provides sufficient tools for the psychological understanding of psychological experience. The particular kinds of experience which defeat these approaches are what he terms synchronistic phenomena, ‘the simultaneous occurrence of a certain psychic state with one or more external events which appear as meaningful parallels to the momentary subjective state’ (op. cit., para. 850); but his essay ranges far more widely than simply trying to find a way of thinking about mean- ingful coincidences. The potential value of the essay to the clinician lies in Jung’s discussion of the limitations of the scientific, teleological and her- meneutic approaches, followed by his postulating an additional approach to human experience, his ‘acausal connecting principle’. In elaborating this, he offers the analyst an approach to the patient which is distinctive and which in my view forms the basis of Jungian analytic attitude. The work is, however, generally read along quite different salients. One of these lines of enquiry (e.g., Williams 1963; Gordon 1993; Fordham 1985) explores the clinical experience of synchronistic phenomena; and much of the Jungian clinical writing which has drawn on the concepts inherent in ‘Synchronicity’ uses it mainly as a way of thinking about coincidental events within the analytic narrative which have no apparent causal connection. The other main approach in the Jungian literature (e.g., von Franz 1974 & 1980; Bolen 1979; Clarke 1992 & 1994) examines synchronicity in terms of comparative studies in the history of ideas by studying parallels in the physical sciences, mathematics and in Chinese and other non-European thought. I want to take a different salient through the text, essentially one which approaches it from the point of view of analytic attitude, to examine first the concepts Jung proposes and then to look at the clinical attitude to the analytic experience which these imply. The starting point of Jung’s paper is, as is well known, those phenomena which cannot be explained by causality (the famous astrological experiment = since much criticized; a number of anecdotal and clinical examples such as the patient recounting a dream of a scarab as an insect flew into Jung’s room). These phenomena for which no causal links can be established lead Jung into a critique of scientific causality and he argues that the psyche has aims and goals, and is not simply the product of causes. But Jung is not simply vaulting from causality to teleology. He contrasts, rather, the scientific with the analytic approach. In the laboratory situation, he says, Nature is forced to answer man’s question along the lines man has posed it. Nature is therefore artificially restricted in the laboratory to the question posed, and to that question alone. This process excludes ‘the workings of Nature in her unrestricted wholeness’ (Jung 1955a, para. 864). ‘If’, on the other hand, ‘we want to know what these workings are, we need a method of enquiry which imposes the fewest possible conditions, or if possible no conditions at all, and then leaves Nature to answer out of her616 G. Bright fullness’ (Jung 1955a, para. 864). Jung calls this ‘the intuitive or “mantic” experiment-with-the-whole’ (op. cit., para. 865). In this approach, ‘there is no need of any question which imposes conditions and restricts the wholeness of the natural process’. However, Jung points out, the disadvantage which ‘leaps before the eye’ in this approach: it is that, ‘in contrast to the scientific experiment, one does not know what has happened? (op. cit., para. 865). All of this Jung wrote in relation to isolating an approach to phenomena based on synchronicity, rather than on the familiar methods of explanation. In reading it, however, I am struck by its obvious clinical application. The approach of refraining from channelling and restricting the patient, of refraining from imposing conditions, so leaving the psyche free to ‘answer out of her fullness’ has been fundamental in the analyst’s approach to the patient from the earliest days of psychoanalytic treatment. The disadvantage and sense of frustration involved in not being able to know what is going on are also familiar to us. At this point in his argument, Jung seems to move on to hermeneutics as the preferred alternative to the limitations of the scientific-causal approach. He says that if meaningful coincidences cannot be explained causally, then the connecting principle must lie in the ‘equal significance’ of parallel events: ‘In other words, their tertium comparationis is meaning’ (ibid., para. 915). But before we follow this line of Jung’s argument, a second possible alterna- tive to causality has to be addressed — the teleological viewpoint which is so often seen as Jung’s distinctive contribution to the understanding of psy- chology and especially psychopathology. ‘Causality’, Jung writes (ibid., para. 843, footnote 36), ‘is only one principle, and psychology ... cannot be exhausted by causal methods only, because the mind lives by aims as well’. However, to invoke teleology in a causal, explanatory way is to presuppose some foreknowledge: ‘Whether we like it or not, we find ourselves in this embarrassing position as soon as we begin to reflect on the teleological processes in biology, or to investigate the compensatory function of the unconscious. . . . Final causes, twist them how we will, postulate a foreknow- ledge of some kind’ (Jung’s italics) (ibid., para. 931); so as he puts it in a footnote at an earlier point in the argument: ‘Psychic finality rests on a “pre- existent” meaning which becomes problematical only when it is an uncon- scious arrangement. In that case, we have to suppose a “knowledge” prior to all consciousness’ (ibid., para. 843, footnote 38). This a priori knowledge is, of course, the archetypal arrangement of the collective unconscious; or in individual terms, specifically the Self’s drive towards the goal of self-reali- zation. Teleology cannot, then, in Jung’s terms, be discussed without reference to meaning; for to cite goals as a form of cause in psychology is to presuppose some kind of foreknowledge, some kind of purpose, and therefore begs the question as to how we understand the purpose. This question, put simply, is the question of the meaning of the goals. Thus Jung's argument brings him to hermeneutics as a third possible waySynchronicity as a basis of analytic attitude 617 of understanding the chaotic material. To see the analytic task in terms of a joint search for meaning by analyst and analysand is currently a very popular approach across all analytic schools, and I therefore think it is now particu- larly relevant to examine Jung’s critique of the limitations of hermeneutics, which led him to formulate synchronicity as a more useful and intellectually valid way of conceptualizing an analytic approach. The question which Jung raises is whether meaning can exist outside the psyche; whether there is such a thing as objective meaning which cannot be reduced to the subjective imputing of meaning by the human mind. He is led to this question by the phenomenon of ‘meaningful coincidences’ for which scientific causal connections cannot be established, yet which retain some connection in terms of meaning. Is this meaning subjective or objective? Can we address this material simply in hermeneutic terms, or do we need to look further? Jung concludes that we must look further; and after following the lines of his argument for doing so as set out in ‘Synchronicity’, I shall try to show how the same line of approach can be applied clinically to the analytic task. In other words, I want to argue that synchronicity offers analysts a better model for approaching our work than other approaches to hermeneutics can provide. ‘Meaning’, writes Jung, ‘is an anthropomorphic interpretation. ... What the factor which appears to us as “meaning” may be in itself we have no possibility of knowing’ (ibid., para. 916). When the psyche is observing itself, the circularity is obvious, and it is hard to see how the psyche can be in a position to establish the existence of objective meaning. Dilthey, in 1900, attempted in The Origins of Hermeneutics to establish a valid hermeneutic method, which Hewison (1995) cites and characterizes as ‘the hermeneutic circle’ in which the validity of meanings can only emerge within the dialogue of interpreter and interpreted. As Hewison points out, interpretation in this view is a process which can never finish, and which transforms the interpreter as well as the interpreted. There can, then, be no ‘final’ or ‘objective’ meaning in hermeneutics so conceived. For Jung, however, this was not a satisfactory answer to his question about the existence of objective or transcendent meaning. Whilst he agrees that we have no scientific method of proving the existence of an objective meaning which is not just a psychic product, we are, he argues (Jung 1955a, para. 915), driven to the hypothesis that objective meaning exists if we are to avoid the attribution of ‘magical causality’ to synchronous events. Magical causality involves ascribing to the psyche ‘a power that far exceeds its empirical range of action. In that case we should have to suppose, if we wish to retain causality, that Swedenborg’s unconscious staged the Stockholm fire, or conversely that the objective event activated in some quite inconceivable manner the corresponding images in Swedenborg’s brain’ (Jung 195 5a, para. 915). A concept of transcendent meaning is required by psychology, which cannot afford to overlook the existence of synchronous phenomena. ‘These618 G. Bright things are too important for an understanding of the unconscious, quite apart from their philosophical implications’ (op. cit., para. 915): In other words, Jung is adopting a similar method to that which Freud used fifty years earlier when he argued from the apparently trivial phenomena of parapraxis, jokes and dreams to elaborate his concept of the part played by the unconscious in human psychology. It is unfortunate that Jung’s similar work on synchron- icity has all too often been read only at the level of bizarre coincidence and the paranormal, rather than following through his argument which leads towards a radically new insight into the nature of the unconscious, and implies a highly distinctive analytic approach. ‘Synchronicity: an acausal connecting principle’ is quite simply Jung’s modi- fication of hermeneutics; it is his concept of the transcendent nature of meaning. ‘Synchronicity’, he writes, ‘is not a philosophical view but an empirical concept which postulates an intellectually necessary principle’ (op. cit., para. 960). It ‘postulates a meaning which is a priori to human conscious- ness and apparently exists outside man’. Jung’s term ‘psychoid’ is his way of referring to the latent and unconscious meaning which exists in all matter, not just in the human psyche, and still less just in the conscious mind. Even though the contents of the psychoid are unconscious, it is, as Jung says, an intellectually necessary concept to prevent the imputing of magical causality. To retain and to use a concept of the psychoid in the analytic approach to the patient is therefore as necessary as to retain and use concepts such as the existence of an unconscious, or of introjection, projection or unconscious identity. Absolute or objective meaning is seen by Jung as uniquely the property of the psychoid, and he defines the psychoid as unconscious and unknowable. The implication of this for analytic work is that both analyst and patient are therefore restrained from attributing meaning to the analytic material as if the conscious meanings they find or create were objectively or absolutely true. In other words, by introducing a concept of objective and unconscious meaning (the psychoid), Jung enables us to be explicitly clear that any conscious attribution of meaning, such as an analytic interpretation, must be seen as subjective and provisional. It is work in progress, not a glimpse of absolute truth. Any concept which helps to put the brake on such attribution of objective truth to interpretations must, in practical terms alone, be worth the consideration of every practitioner of psychotherapy, as the pressure to impute meaning as if it were absolutely true and the pressure to know are, as we are all aware, so intense; it could be called the wish to possess the truth, By bearing in mind that underlying patterns, connections and meanings are unconscious, the analyst is helped to refrain from speaking about and using pattern and meaning as if he knew all about it - that is, as if it were wholly within the domain of the conscious. The concept of the psychoid is the idea that meaning exists a priori, and is inherent in matter as well as in mind. The concept arose, like its parent concept of synchronicity, from observed phenomena for which no explanation