Quote: Jung at heart

“You are what you do, not what you say you’ll do.”

― Carl Jung

“Action is everything! It really doesn’t matter what you say or even what you think; it’s what you do that matters.”

Action Girl’s Guide to Living – Sarah Dyer

“Action is character.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote this in his notes while working on his final (unfinished) novel, The Last Tycoon. He wrote it in caps: ACTION IS CHARACTER.

Francis Scott Fitzgerald (1890-1940)

Coincidences No.s 291, 292 & 293

No. 291 Crudo

I get off the tube at Bank on my way to Norwich today (to give a lecture on Creative Thinking at NUA) and hear my name called across the platform. It is an old colleague & friend of mine from Channel 4. We greet each other and he notices I’m holding a book in my hand, my reading material from the tube journey. He asks me what the book is. “Crudo, we’re reading it for my book group.” “She’s one of my best friends, Olivia Laing [the author].”

On top of those coincidences (the meeting and the book), I get on the train at Liverpool Street and look up Olivia Laing as I know nothing about her and the book is unusual and intriguing. It turns out she comes from the village of Chalfont St Peter in Buckinghamshire.

A few minutes later I’m still arsing about on my phone. I have been approached to connect by a person on LinkedIn, a director called Jacques Salmon, whose name doesn’t ring a bell. I look at his profile. He went to school at Chalfont Community College in Chalfont St Peter.

No. 292 Stay Human

A bit later in the journey I am looking up one of the people featured in Michael Franti’s new documentary Stay Human, the UK premiere of which I saw last night at Bush Hall. It spotlighted the work of an amazing midwife-activist called Robin Lim.

As I text the link to my Other Half (who came to the film and accompanying gig last night and was particularly taken by Robin and her work) a notification appears on my phone – Michael Franti has just liked a photo I posted on Instagram after the event yesterday.

No. 293 Jung

I spend the day in Norwich, Norfolk. The county has been on my mind since listening to my friend Tim Wright’s Curiously Specific podcast, the latest episode being about The Eagle Has Landed which is set in Norfolk (where Tim hails from). [see also No. 289]

I bought a DVD of the movie of The Eagle Has Landed to rewatch it after hearing the podcast on Sunday. It arrived in the post today so I start watching it this evening (I haven’t seen it since it came out in 1976). As I’m watching one of the early scenes Robert Duvall (playing Colonel Radl) talks about Jung (” a great thinker”) and his notion of ‘Synchronicity’, arguably the essence of these posts. An item of intelligence about Churchill visiting a stately home near the Norfolk coast would normally be of little interest but by coinciding with Hitler’s crazy notion of kidnapping Churchill it suddenly becomes full of meaning.

The term ‘Synchronicity’ (Synchronizität) was coined by analytical psychologist Carl Jung to signify, as I understand it, the acausal connection of two or more physical, psychological or psychic phenomena. He introduced the notion in the 1920s but didn’t gave a full statement of it until 1951.

This concept came to him through a particular patient’s case that was at an impasse. One night she dreamt of a golden scarab. The next day, during this same patient’s psychotherapy session, an insect crashed into  the window of Jung’s office. Jung caught it and found to his astonishment  that it was a golden scarab,  very unusual in that climate.

So, the concept is all about coincidence – in this case, between the scarab dreamt by the patient and its appearance in reality in the psychotherapist’s office – a meaningful coincidence of physical and psychological phenomena that are acausally connected. Jung considered that events are “meaningful coincidences” if they occur with no causal connection and yet seem to be significantly related.

He defined Synchronicity variously throughout his career – as an “acausal connecting principle”, “meaningful coincidence” and “acausal parallelism.” In 1952 Jung published a paper “Synchronizität als ein Prinzip akausaler Zusammenhänge” (Synchronicity – An Acausal Connecting Principle). Jung used the concept to argue for the existence of the paranormal.

In collecting coincidences in my life I have come across some that have no possible rational explanation. These are few. More numerous are ones that are not logical but come down to something being in the air. Plenty can be rationalised.

Forever Jung