The cultural significance of synchronicity for Jung and Pauli 1 Roderick Main, University of Essex, UK Abstract: This paper considers the cultural significance of C.G. Jung’s concept of synchronicity, as this was envisaged both by Jung himself and by the physicist Wolfgang Pauli, Jung’s most important discussant in developing the concept. For both thinkers the principle of synchronicity was, above all, an attempt to develop an expanded, more holistic understanding of science. The paper argues, however, that their motives for proposing this development were not just, as might be expected, scientific, philosophical, and psychological (including personal), but also historical, social, political, and religious, and involved consideration of esoteric as well as mainstream currents of thought. Key words: complementarity, esotericism, Jung, Pauli, religion, science, synchronicity In their respective fields of psychology and physics, Carl Jung (1875–1961) and Wolfgang Pauli (1900–1958) were among the most highly honoured thinkers of the twentieth century. Yet both were also deeply critical of the culture in which they trained and worked. In particular, while proudly identifying themselves as scientists, they considered that the rationalistic cast of the dominant science of their day was narrow and dangerous, entraining serious psychological, social, political, and ethical problems. For Jung, as he states in his essay ‘The undiscovered self: present and future’ (Jung 1957), science ‘is based in the main on statistical truths and abstract knowledge and therefore imparts an unrealistic, rational picture of the world’ (ibid., para. 498). This leads to a ‘levelling down’ of ‘not only the psyche but the individual man and, indeed, all individual events whatsoever’ (ibid., para. 499). The ‘statistical world-picture’ thus ‘thrusts aside the individual in favour of anonymous units that pile up into mass formations […] organizations […] the abstract idea of the State’, in which ‘[t]he goal and meaning of individual life (which is the only real life)’ are submerged (ibid., para. 499). In Jung’s view, the consequences of this ‘psychological mass-mindedness’ 1 This paper was originally presented as part of the plenary panel ‘From Copenhagen to the Consulting Room: Complementarity, Synchronicity, and Neural Coupling’ at the XIXth International Congress for Analytical Psychology: 100 Years On: Origins, Innovations and Controversies, Copenhagen, Denmark, 18–23 August 2013. 0021-8774/2014/5902/174 © 2014, The Society of Analytical Psychology Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX42DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA. DOI: 10.1111/1468-5922.12067 Journal of Analytical Psychology , 2014, 59, 174–180