Jungian Psychotherapy: Synchronicity and Mystique

One of Jung’s greatest and most distinctive contributions is his theory of the collective unconscious, with its attendant elaboration regarding archetypes. Earlier, Freud shocked the world with his concept of the personal unconscious and his assertion that most of what we do is driven by motivations beyond our awareness. Jung goes even further to assert that there are ever deeper levels of the unconscious in which we are all connected through genetic memory and ancient, perhaps pre-existing, energy patterns known as archetypes. According to Jungian thought, it is out of this dark, unseen universe that the gods arise. And not just the gods, but also symptoms, dreams, fairy tales, myths, synchronicities, and broad waves of historical change.

An understanding of the hidden underplay of the collective unconscious and the archetypes gives the therapist a much broader context within which to understand the client’s struggles.

Some interesting perspectives:

• Many beautiful women, such as Hollywood stars, have been unwittingly entangled by the tragic side of the Aphrodite archetype.
• Sexuality and religion are not opposites but are clearly bound together in mythology and the religious imagination.
• Jung’s notions of synchronicity were refined by his continuing dialogue with Einstein and other leading physicists of the day.
• Synchronicities often confirm that we are on the right life path.
• The Anima archetype is embodied in our experience of the personal mother and the whole line of mothers from whom we are descended as well as the more universal archetype of The Great Mother.