Synchronicity Cambray

Ring of moving koi
In misty reflecting pool—
Full moon at sunset 1
Being in Japan, I felt like I had gone home. My being alone (a contraction
of all One) was mirrored by the full moon and reflected in
the pond by the ring of koi. I felt centered and at peace; this was a
meaningful coincidence, or synchronicity.
This superb volume by Joseph Cambray helps us to connect nature
and psyche and see that we live in an interconnected universe. The
fact that his book comes at this time is an asymmetric synchronicity.
It is an act of creation at the right moment. His work is scholarly and
his background as a scientist and analyst enables him to incorporate
many empirical findings that facilitate our understanding of the reality
of synchronicity.
In chapter 1, “Synchronicity: The History of a Radical Idea,”
Cambray traces the origin of the concept of synchronicity to an
early conversation between Jung and Albert Einstein and links it to
the relativity of time and space. He helps us grasp the interaction of
Jung and Wolfgang Pauli in their struggle to define and understand
synchronicity. It was Pauli who helped Jung formulate the “psychoid
archetype” that grounds the psyche in biology (and nature) and allows
for interconnections with things in the universe. Add meaning
to such a moment of interconnectedness and you have synchronicity.
Jung’s technique of active imagination facilitates the interconnection
of psyche and nature and often results in a creative moment as well
as an artistic product such as the haiku above. Cambray, being an
analyst, allows us to see equanimity in a new light. It is a dance of subjectivity
and objectivity in analysis. We mirror our patients and have
subjective empathy, but we also break up the symmetry of the mirror
and at times we experience “objective sympathy.” 2 He documents how
Jung’s concept of synchronicity is linked to the I Ching of ancient
Taoism, the origin of the universe, the psychoid archetype, psychic
relativity, God, preestablished harmony in the monads of Gottfried
Leibniz, the implicate order of David Bohm, and the Self (imago Dei)
of Jung’s psychology.
( XII ) Series Editor's Foreword