Qualitative Number

Qualitative number names marie-louise-von-franz‘s late claim that the natural numbers are archetypes of order — simultaneously quantitative and qualitative, simultaneously psychic and physical — and that their doubleness is what makes number the mediating term between psyche and matter. The claim elaborates a remark carl-jung made to her late in his life: “I always come upon the enigma of the natural number. I have a distinct feeling that Number is a key to the mystery, since it is just as much discovered as it is invented. It is quantity as well as meaning” (Jung, cited in von Franz, Psyche and Matter).

Von Franz pursued this in Number and Time and in the essays gathered in Psyche and Matter: “the natural number series consists not only of quantitatively lined-up units, but is at the same time also a continuum consisting always of the same primordial unit manifesting itself in time in a succession of qualitative changes. These qualitative numbers are counted backward” (Psyche and Matter). Divinatory systems — the I Ching above all — operate on this retrograde qualitative count, which is why they generate meaningful and not merely coincidental correlations.

Because number is indifferently psychic and physical, it is precisely the archetype in which the unus-mundus shows itself. synchronicity is the creatio continua by which the unus mundus sporadically breaks into phenomenal time. She acknowledges her limit: “I was able to take this up to the number four. Then it became too complicated, and at that point I also hit my head on the ceiling” (Psyche and Matter) — the same ceiling Jung had reached shortly before his death. The question remains open; von Franz’s position is that it will be answered only by a complete overhaul of mathematics that restores qualitative number to its seat.

Relationships

• synchronicity
• unus-mundus
• archetype
• synchronicity-iching

Primary sources

• von-franz-psyche-and-matter (von Franz 2014)
• von-franz-cg-jung-his (von Franz 1975)