The Relationship of the Archetype and Synchronicity in Jungian Psychology

There is a story that Jung placed his fingertips on the flat surface of a tabletop and commented that if we were only conscious of the points where the fingers touch the surface we would assume that each of the points were independent and unrelated to each other because that is all we would see. However, if we could see the whole picture beyond where the table and the fingertips meet, we would see that the tips are only small parts of the fingers, joined to the hand, and we would know that they are interconnected through their relationship with the hand. This metaphor illustrates the psychoidal nature of the archetype in relation to synchronicity.

Jung defined archetypes as inherited, universal psychic behavior patterns, or templates of human experience. These specific configurations determine the laws of consciousness, and form the connection between the inner psyche and outer physical world. They cannot be experienced directly, only through images and motifs. Using the example of the fingers touching the table, the hand might represent a specific archetype with absolute knowledge such as the Self, the inner god image of the psyche. In the metaphor as an archetype, the hand has a specific form that dictates how it functions that is not perceived directly in conscious awareness. Because of the hand’s anatomy, and the way the sensory receptors process information, the table will be experienced in a particular fashion. It would be impossible to experience contact with the table without the actual structure of the hand to contain the life energy and touch the table. The hand’s shape influences the contact with the table, similar to how archetypal pattern determines human experience.

The physical framework of the hand, like the psychic structure of the archetype, has a genetically inherited collective character. This DNA structure is a principle, or potential, rather than a concrete manifestation of what may be experienced. Similar to the DNA blueprint that determines the structure of the hand, the archetype maps the latent potential of the psyche originating from the culmination of ancestral knowledge in the collective unconscious. A snake with its own unique genetic makeup making physical contact with the same tabletop would have a different experience from the human. The snake’s method of physical contact, capacity for perception, and conscious awareness is determined by its own particular DNA code. These genetic patterns exist in both the physical and psychic archetypal realms and are the templates of human experience and behavior.

Synchronicity is the result of the inherent order or innate knowledge of the archetype, which transcends human experience. Jung defined synchronicity as a “coincidence in time of two or more casually unrelated events which have the same or similar meaning (CW 8, par 849).” If the tabletop symbolizes the field of conscious awareness experienced by the ego, the contact points of the fingertips touching the table would be what is actually experienced in space and time. Five fingertips touching the surface at exactly the same time might appear to be unusual coincidence if observed only from the vantage point of the tabletop. Such an occurrence would be synchronistic because the existing relationship between them outside physical reality is unknown. All five of the events might appear to be random but meaningful because they happen together.

Like archetypes, an essential characteristic of synchronistic events is that they have an emotional or psychic charge that makes them meaningful, producing a numinous effect on the person experiencing them. The meaning of a synchronistic event requires that it be understood symbolically, not just intellectually. This often occurs during important phases of individuation when an archetype has been activated in the unconscious. Synchronistic events are frequently experienced in dreams and active imagination when the lines between the conscious and unconscious become blurred. They originate in the archetypal realm, which is eternal, existing outside time and space, and seem to have a pre-established order before crossing the threshold of consciousness. Hunches or visions may appear linked to external events occurring in the past, present, or future. If it were possible to reach beyond the veil of conscious awareness or the table’s surface, the image of the fingers extending into the hand and touching the table would be visible and it would be apparent that they were linked through an acausal connecting principle.

Jung said that archetypes have a dual nature that is transgressive, existing in the realm of both psyche and matter. Archetypes are the link between the physical and the psychic world. They are the fingers that connect the tips touching the table of human consciousness to the hand. The center of the hand existing in the archetypal realm is essentially unknown. Its existence is only experienced indirectly when the fingertips and the tabletop meet, and psyche and matter connect. This is unrepresentable and unknowable in conscious awareness in and of itself. In the hand and table metaphor, the archetype is both the hand and the DNA that forms the hand. As movement is made deeper into the archetypal psyche, away from subjective experience, the psyche becomes increasingly objective and universal. As movement continues along this continuum, archetypes of the objective psyche, or the collective unconscious, eventually crossover into the realm of matter referred to as the psychoidal realm. Jung saw the psychoidal realm as the central ground of empirical being which exists beyond time and space. Jung considered this a unus mundus, an ultimate unity of physical and psychic energy.