Abstract

Much criticism has been leveled at Jung\'s theory of synchronicity, usually as a result of misunderstanding certain key, but often obscure, concepts used by Jung in his major essay Synchronicity (1960). The issues of meaningfulness, causality, and acausality are discussed, because synchronicity is by definition "a coincidence in time of two or more causally unrelated events which have the same or a similar meaning" (Jung, 1960). Synchronicity is contrasted with coincidence as a "meaningless chance grouping," and the Law of Large Numbers is shown not to give account of all cases of ostensible synchronicity. The author reviews other reports about synchronicity, causality, and acausality. It is suggested that generally psi and synchronicity are more alike than V. Mansfield et al (1998) claim, and that synchronicity and psi are scientifically causal for another reason: synchronistic archetypal contingence is no different in effect than psi-permissive and psi-conducive cond!itions, which may all be described as metacausal.