Research on synchronicity: status and prospects

This chapter provides an overview of existing research on the concept of synchronicity, from which some promising directions for research are then highlighted under various headings: conceptual, empirical, historical, theoretical, clinical, and cultural. Jung defined synchronicity in a variety of ways. Concisely, he defined it as "meaningful coincidence as "acausal parallelism" as "an acausal connecting principle" and once, more poetically, as "the 'rupture of time' ". More fully, he defined it as "the simultaneous occurrence of a certain psychic state with one or more external events which appear as meaningful parallels to the momentary subjective state." Jung's work on synchronicity was also inspired by psychical research and especially by the work of Joseph Banks Rhine in the new discipline of parapsychology. These newer or aspiring sciences have provided significant foci within the work of Mansfield, Storm, and Haule.