Causality stands at the center of one of depth psychology's most consequential epistemological debates: whether the psyche and its meaningful events can be adequately accounted for within a strictly causal-mechanistic framework, or whether such a framework must be supplemented—or even displaced—by principles of finality, meaning, and acausal connection. Jung occupies the pivotal position, insisting that causality is a point of view, not an absolute law, and that psychological phenomena demand a complementary finalistic or teleological orientation. His theory of synchronicity constitutes the most radical challenge: it proposes that certain coincidences of inner and outer events are connected not by causal chains but by equivalence of meaning, thus designating an 'acausal connecting principle' alongside causality in the scientific picture of the world. Von Franz extends this challenge by linking synchronicity to quantum-physical indeterminacy and to the theological architecture of Cartesian determinism. McGilchrist interrogates causality from a neurological and philosophical standpoint, questioning whether the Aristotelian isolation of causal factors can capture the integral wholeness of becoming. The Stoic tradition, as recovered by Long and Sedley, complicates the field further by insisting on a thoroughgoing causal nexus that grounds fate and determinism. Ricoeur, operating in the phenomenological register, distinguishes the causality of agents from the causality of events, preserving a space for initiative and responsibility. Across these positions, the tension between linear-mechanistic causality and more capacious, pluralistic models of causation—formal, final, acausal—proves constitutive for depth psychology's self-understanding.
In the library
22 passages
Causality is the way we explain the link between two successive events. Synchronicity designates the parallelism of time and meaning between psychic and psychophysical events, which scientific knowledge so far has been unable to reduce to a common principle.
Jung formally distinguishes causality from synchronicity, defining the latter as an acausal connecting principle grounded in meaningful coincidence rather than in sequential cause-and-effect.
Jung, Carl Gustav, The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, 1960thesis
We must always bear in mind that causality is a point of view. It affirms the inevitable and immutable relation of a seri
Jung argues that causality is an epistemological perspective rather than an absolute principle, and that psychology's finalistic orientation is equally necessary and irreducible.
Jung, C.G., Collected Works Volume 4: Freud and Psychoanalysis, 1961thesis
if the causal principle is only relatively valid, then it follows that even though in the vast majority of cases an apparently chance series can be causally explained, there must still remain a number of cases which do not show any causal connection.
Jung advances the claim that the relative validity of causality necessitates the conceptual recognition of genuinely acausal events, motivating the project of synchronicity theory.
Jung, Carl Gustav, The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, 1960thesis
the principle of causality corresponds to a God image. The father of causality, Descartes, justified the absolute determinism of all natural processes by saying that God would never alter His established laws.
Von Franz traces the historical theology underlying scientific causality, arguing that Cartesian determinism is a projection of a static God-image and that synchronistic phenomena represent acts of creation which causality cannot contain.
von Franz, Marie-Louise, Psyche and Matter, 2014thesis
No matter the stage of psychological development humanity may be in, the innate, preexistent archetypal pattern of causality by necessity manifests itself in the human's attempt to understand his surroundings.
Edinger, explicating Jung, presents the causal drive itself as an archetypal pattern—a psychic a priori—that shapes all human attempts at understanding, independent of cultural or historical stage.
Edinger, Edward F., The New God-Image: A Study of Jung's Key Letters Concerning the Evolution of the Western God-Image, 1996supporting
Then, in the course of the eighteenth century, it became the exclusive principle of natural science. With the rise of the physical sciences in the nineteenth century the correspondence theory vanished completely from the surface.
Jung historically situates causality's rise to hegemony in natural science, positioning synchronicity as a modern recovery of the older doctrine of correspondence which mechanistic causality had displaced.
Jung, Carl Gustav, The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, 1960supporting
Compared with the simpler (or simplistic) modern view of causality, which is entirely linear-mechanistic in nature, Aristotle's more nuanced and capacious formulation defined 'cause' as that which is a necessary, though not in itself sufficient, condition
Tarnas contrasts the impoverished linear-mechanistic concept of modern causality with Aristotle's fourfold causal schema, arguing the latter better accommodates the meaning and teleology evident in synchronistic phenomena.
Richard Tarnas, Cosmos and Psyche: Intimations of a New World View, 2006supporting
Would not the idea of causation be inherently invalid, just because it isolates certain factors? One way to think of a cause is 'that without which something would not be'
McGilchrist, invoking Schiller's challenge, interrogates the ontological legitimacy of causal analysis, arguing that isolating causal factors distorts the integral wholeness of becoming.
McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting
This discovery of an uncaused event opens a gap in the causal universe. It is not only that science has not yet figured out how causality works here, but rather that in principle the rule of causation does not apply.
Stein explains how quantum-physical discoveries of genuinely uncaused events provide the empirical precedent that Jung invokes to justify positing a domain beyond causality.
Stein, Murray, Jung's Map of the Soul: An Introduction, 1998supporting
Jung was understandably ambivalent about putting forward an idea of the magnitude that synchronicity entails. Ever the cautious and conservative Swiss, Jung tried generally to rest his case on purely psychological arguments.
Stein frames Jung's development of synchronicity as a deliberate and anxious departure from purely causal-psychological explanation toward cosmological speculation about acausal order.
Stein, Murray, Jung's Map of the Soul: An Introduction, 1998supporting
needs to be understood both causally and purposively. Causally interpreted, it seems like a symptom of a physiological or personal state, the outcome of antecedent events. Purposively interpreted, it seems like a symbol.
Samuels articulates the Jungian dual-hermeneutic framework in which psychological phenomena, especially dreams, require both causal-reductive and purposive-symbolic interpretations simultaneously.
Samuels, Andrew, Jung and the Post-Jungians, 1985supporting
conceives an event as the effect of a cause, in the sense that unchanging substances change their relations to one another according to fixed laws.
Jung contrasts the mechanistic-causal and the energic-final viewpoints in physics, establishing the conceptual ground for arguing that psychology requires the finalistic perspective as well as the causal.
Jung, Carl Gustav, The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, 1960supporting
The energic point of view on the other hand is in essence final; the event is traced back from effect to cause on the assumption that some kind of energy underlies the changes in phenomena.
Jung and Pauli together establish that the energic-finalistic viewpoint is a necessary complement to mechanical causality, laying groundwork for the quaternio schema that includes synchronicity.
Jung, C. G. and Pauli, Wolfgang, The Interpretation of Nature and the Psyche, 1955supporting
At the most basic level, this is the causal operation of the active principle god, on the passive principle matter.
Long and Sedley present Stoic causal theory as rooted in the interaction of active (divine) and passive (material) principles, offering a classical counterpoint to mechanistic causality that resonates with depth psychology's analogical thinking.
A.A. Long and D.N. Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers, 1987supporting
At the beginning of each world cycle a causal nexus is providentially planned and initiated, in virtue of w
Long and Sedley outline Chrysippus's deterministic causal nexus undergirding Stoic fate, providing the historical depth against which Jung's challenge to universal causal determinism is implicitly positioned.
A.A. Long and D.N. Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers, 1987supporting
Jung has observed that the final observable 'entities' in the psyche, the archetypes, seem not to be static structures, but rather systems of psychic energy or a 'mode of various relationships of energy.'
Von Franz draws a parallel between physics' shift from static particles to energy configurations and Jung's conception of archetypes, situating both within a broader critique of substance-causality.
von Franz, Marie-Louise, Psyche and Matter, 2014supporting
the notion of cause fans out with such polysemy that one can no longer tell if it is the result of incipient anthropomorphism that we see the bulldozer push, as we might push a rock.
Ricoeur highlights the radical polysemy of 'cause,' questioning whether human agent-causality and material causality share a common ground or are irreducibly distinct categories.
a dialectic passes through two stages: a disjunctive stage, at the end of which we observe the necessarily antagonistic character of the original causality of the agent in relation to the other modes of causali
Ricoeur argues that agent-causality stands in irreducible tension with other modes of causation, requiring a dialectical working-through rather than a simple subsumption under natural law.
if, at the present stage of our investigation, we can represent this grasp of the human agent on things, within the course of the world, as Kant himself says, only as a conjunction between several sorts of causality,
Ricoeur, reading Kant, proposes 'initiative' as the concept that unites the otherwise antagonistic sorts of causality—empirical and intelligible—operative in human action.
it is highly unlikely that the planets send out physical emanations, like electromagnetic radiation, that causally influence events in human life in a mechanistic way so as to produce the observed correlations.
Tarnas argues that astrological correlations cannot be explained by straightforward physical causation, positioning astrology instead within a synchronistic or acausal framework of meaning.
Richard Tarnas, Cosmos and Psyche: Intimations of a New World View, 2006aside
'cross-connection' of events cannot be explained causally, then the connecting principle must lie in the equal significance of parallel events; in other words, their tertium comparationis is meaning.
Jung identifies meaning—not energy transfer—as the tertium comparationis of acausally connected events, marking the conceptual core of his synchronicity principle.
Jung, Carl Gustav, The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, 1960aside
Descartes says that this is first law of nature: Each thing, insofar as it is simple and undivided, always remains as much as possible in the same state and never changes but by external causes.
Von Franz documents Descartes' formulation of universal causal determinism as grounded in divine immutability, illuminating the theological roots of the causal worldview that Jung's synchronicity implicitly challenges.
von Franz, Marie-Louise, Dreams: A Study of the Dreams of Jung, Descartes, Socrates, and Other Historical Figures, 1998aside