Tag: myth

Can a Movie Excite an Unexpected Intellectual Adventure?

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At about the time when this was written Jung was working, in collaboration with Pauli, on his treatise on Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle, which was published together with Pauli’s essay on Kepler in one volume. This was evidently meant as a symbolic act: one of the greatest physicists of the century joining forces with one of its greatest psychologists. The result was a stimulating exercise in unorthodox speculation, but at the same time sadly disappointing. It did not amount to a theory in the proper sense, but rather to a universal schema, both very bold and very vague.

Jung’s treatise hinges on his concept of “Synchronicity”. He defines it as “the simultaneous occurrence of two meaningfully but not causally connected events”;1 or alternatively as “a coincidence in time of two or more causally unrelated events which have the same or similar meaning2…equal in rank to causality as a principle of explanation”.3 This is an almost verbatim repetition of Kammerer’s definition of “Seriality” as “a recurrence of the same or similar things or events in time or space”—events which, as far as can be ascertained; “are not connected by the same acting cause”. The main difference appears to be that Kammerer emphasises serial happenings in time (though, of course, he includes contemporaneous coincidences in space), whereas Jung’s concept of synchronicity seems to refer only to simultaneous events—although he includes precognitive dreams which occurred sometimes several days before the events. He tried to get around the time paradox by saying that the unconscious mind functions outside of the physical framework of space-time; thus precognitive experiences are “evidently not synchronous but are synchronistic since they are experienced as psychic images in the present as though the objective event already existed”.4 One wonders why Jung created these unnecessary complications by coining a term which implies simultaneity, and then explaining that it does not mean what it means. But this kind of obscurity combined with verbosity runs through much of Jung’s writing.

Although Kammerer’s “Seriality” and Jung’s “Synchronicity” are as similar as a pair of gloves, each fits one hand only. Kammerer confined himself to analogies in naive physical terms, rejecting ESP and mentalistic explanations. Jung went to the opposite extreme and tried to explain all phenomena which could not be accounted for in terms of physical causality, as manifestations of the unconscious mind: “Synchronicity is a phenomenon that seems to be primarily connected with psychic conditions, that is to say with processes in the unconscious.”5 Its deepest strata, according to Jungian terminology, are formed by the “collective unconscious”, potentially shared by all members of the race. The “decisive factors” in the collective unconscious are the archetypes which “constitute its structure”.6 They are, as it were, the distilled memories of the human species, but cannot be represented in verbal terms, only in elusive symbols, shared by all mythologies. They also provide “patterns of behaviour”7 for all human beings in archetypal situations—confrontations with death, danger, love, conflict, etc. In such situations the unconscious archetypes invade consciousness, carrying strong emotions and—owing perhaps to the archetype’s indifference to physical space and time—facilitate the occurrence of “synchronistic” events. The appearance of the scarab while the patient was telling her archetypal dream is considered by Jung as an illustration of this nexus. The same applies to the detonations in Freud’s bookcase during Jung’s visit, indicating the explosive nature of their father-son relationship: “Meaningful coincidences which are to be distinguished from meaningless chance-groupings—therefore seem to rest on an archetypal foundation. At least all the cases in my experience and there is a large number of them—show this characteristic?”8

Elsewhere in the essay he writes:

Synchronistic events rest on the simultaneous occurrence of two different psychic states. One of them is the normal, probable state (i.e., the one that is causally explicable), and the other, the critical experience, is the one that cannot be derived causally from the first. In the case of sudden death, the critical experience cannot be recognised immediately as “extra-sensory perception” but can only be verified as such afterwards. …In all these cases, whether it is a question of spatial or of temporal ESP, we find a simultaneity of the normal or ordinary state with another state or experience which is not causally derivable from it, and whose objective existence can only be verified afterwards. …An unexpected [mental] content which is directly or indirectly connected with some objective external event coincides with the ordinary psychic state: this is what I call synchronicity.”9

  1. Jung (1960), p. 441 [ref]
  2. Jung (1960), p.551 [ref]
  3. Jung (1960), p. 435 [ref]
  4. Jung (1960), p. 445 [ref]
  5. Jung (1960), p. 511 [ref]
  6. Jung (1960), p. 436 [ref]
  7. Jung (1960), p. 438 [ref]
  8. Jung (1960), p. 440 [ref]
  9. Jung (1960), pp. 444-5 [ref]
Arthur Koestler, The Roots of Coincidence, Picador, 1974 (first published by Hutchinson & Co. Ltd., 1972), pgs. 94-97.

In the political thriller The Eagle Has Landed, there’s a scene where Col. Radl discusses Jung’s concept of synchronicity. For example, a man checking out drops a coin near the register and searches for it momentarily before giving up. Years later, he is at the same store and finds a similar coin. He rationalizes this with a mundane story, not some cosmic notion of fairness.

Can a movie trigger an unexpected intellectual adventure?

Usually, when considering this question, you might see a film on a specific subject, then perhaps read an article or try to find a book about it.

In his essay on Synchronicity (Jung’s term for meaningful coincidences of events separated in space and/or in time,1 Jung examined some of the beliefs surrounding apparently related incidents which seem to have no causal connection. These incidents could be, for example, the coinciding of a patient’s dream with an actual event corresponding to its occurring at the same time some distance away, it could be ESP phenomena—response to some event that does not become known through any sense; it could be a horoscope reading which corresponds to the observed character of the individual or his self-image, or an astrological prediction which seems to be borne out in subsequent events. The possibility of finding meaning in these correspondences had tantalized Jung for many years. The beginning of his serious study goes back to the days when Albert Einstein was developing his first theory of relativity. During this time he was a guest on several occasions for dinner in Jung’s home. In a letter on Einstein and synchronicity, Jung wrote: “It was Einstein who first started me off thinking about a possible relativity of time as well as space, and their psychic synchronicity.”2

  1. In The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, C. W. 8, pp. 417-531. [ref]
  2. Letter to Dr. Selig dated 25 February, 1953, in Spring, 1971, p. 127. [ref]
June Singer, Boundaries of the Soul: The Practice of Jung’s Psychology, Anchor Books edition, 1973, p. 398.

The Eagle Has Landed begins with newsreel footage depicting Mussolini’s rescue by the Germans during the Gran Sasso raid. This probably inspires the plot to abduct Churchill. Come to the present. Did the operation to capture Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, stem from this, or is there no causal connection? All of this is the intellectual adventure of Jung’s synchronicity.

Signs and Meanings: Education and Semiotics

One learns to function in a world of posters, postings, signs, ads, ordinances, notices and indications of “material culture” (i.e. commerce expressed in designs and slogans on walls and buses, subway cars, etc.).

Think of the 1963 movie The Great Escape. There’s a scene where James Coburn’s Australian character is sitting in an outdoor cafe on the French/Spanish border and the waiter comes over to him and pulls him toward the counter and says, “Telephon, monsieur.”

The James Coburn character has no idea why this is happening but mimics the proprietor and son when they duck down. French Resistance fighters in a car gun down the Germans at the cafe and James Coburn’s character “gets it” and asks them for help to get into Spain. As he ducks down you see posted on the wall of the cafe several ad signs for drinks. One of them is “Byrrh”:

“Byrrh is an aromatised wine-based apéritif made of red wine, mistelle, and quinine. Created in 1866 and a trademark since 1873, it was popular as a French apéritif. With its marketing and reputation as a ‘hygienic drink,’ Byrrh sold well in the early 20th century.” (from Wikipedia)

In many French movies or movies set in France, such as Belle de Jour and The Legend of the Holy Drinker from 1988 (in which a drunken homeless man [played by Rutger Hauer] in Paris is lent 200 francs by a stranger as long as he promises to repay it to a local church when he can afford to; the film depicts the man’s constant frustrations as he attempts to do so).

“Byrrh” appears routinely and a French child begins to ‘get the picture’ on what is being signified and how it differs from other notices, commercial or legal or municipal.

Set in Paris, the ad notice “Byrrh” appears in the same way you’d expect to see “Coca-Cola” and know what the sign signifies. “Coke” is a drink and not the fuel coke. How exactly you make these distinctions is unclear to linguists and other language-watchers. It’s a social phenomenon, partly, like mores and manners.

In the movie The Book Thief (a 2013 World War II war drama, starring Geoffrey Rush, Emily Watson, and Sophie Nélisse, based on the 2005 novel) there’s a moment when you see a sign advertising or reminding you of “Kolonialwaren” (i.e., colonial wares) which was the German way of pointing to a place or store that sold coffee, tea, cocoa, etc. Any German adult of the period would know what “Kolonialwaren” signifies without quite knowing how he or she knows.

A traffic sign (you have to of course realize it’s a traffic sign and not some commercial ad) tells you “Boston 20 m.” You realize or guess it means 20 miles and not 20 meters (since meters are not a typical American measure) nor would it be 20 minutes since that would assume everyone is driving at a speed that gives you 20 minutes, which is far-fetched.

How a person goes from birth to adulthood whereby they spontaneously navigate a welter of different signs and postings, ads and statutes is quite opaque.

Roland Barthes (died 1980) explored this domain of signs (not only physical signs but mythology as a system of signs) all his life:

Barthes is one of the leading theorists of semiotics, the study of signs. A sign, in this context, refers to something which conveys meaning – for example, a written or spoken word, a symbol or a myth.

Education should not ignore “material culture” (i.e., the history of things) and semiotics (i.e., the world “speaking” to you via designs and signs and words).