The concept of cause occupies a contested and generative position across the depth-psychology corpus, where it functions simultaneously as a epistemological premise, a metaphysical category, and a practical tool for understanding psychic life. The corpus reveals three broad axes of engagement. First, the classical philosophical lineage—Aristotle's fourfold causality (material, formal, efficient, final), Stoic determinism and fate, Plotinus on self-caused being, and Descartes on efficient and formal causation—furnishes the conceptual vocabulary that depth psychology inherits and sometimes transforms. Second, Jung and those working in his tradition (Edinger, von Franz, Stein) engage cause primarily through the lens of synchronicity: the claim that psychic events may be meaningfully co-incident without standing in any causal relation, which places the principle of causality itself under critical scrutiny. Von Franz in particular traces the theological genealogy of causal determinism back to Descartes's image of a God who binds himself to his own laws, contrasting this with the acausal creativity she locates in synchronistic phenomena. Third, thinkers such as McGilchrist probe the limits of isolating discrete causal factors from the continuous flow of becoming, asking whether causation as ordinarily conceived falsifies the holistic character of reality. The term thus stands at a crossroads between mechanistic determinism, Aristotelian teleology, Jungian synchronicity, and the question of psychic freedom.
In the library
25 passages
One way to think of a cause is 'that without which something would not be' – something which can, in a sense, take credit (or blame) for its coming about: this is approximately the root meaning of the word Aristotle uses for a cause, αἰτία (aitia).
McGilchrist grounds the concept of cause in Aristotle's αἰτία while questioning whether isolating causal factors from the continuous whole of becoming renders causation inherently invalid.
McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021thesis
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'.
This passage raises the systemic critique that causal analysis falsifies reality by dismembering what is in fact an integral whole of becoming.
McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021thesis
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 historicizes the principle of causality as a theological artifact of Cartesian metaphysics, contrasting it with the acausal creativity she associates with synchronistic phenomena.
von Franz, Marie-Louise, Psyche and Matter, 2014thesis
Chrysippus says that a cause is 'that because of which'; and that the cause is an existent and a body… The Stoics say that every cause is a body which becomes the cause to a body of something incorporeal.
The Stoic doctrine, as represented by Chrysippus, defines cause as a corporeal existent whose effect is always an incorporeal predicate, establishing a fundamental asymmetry between cause and effect.
A.A. Long and D.N. Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers, 1987thesis
In the two orders of things—those whose existence is that of process and those in whom it is Authentic Being—there is a variety of possible relation to Cause.
Plotinus differentiates the relation of cause to the realm of process from its relation to Authentic Being, arguing that Eternal Firsts cannot be referred to outside causes while all derivative beings depend causally on them.
Its formal cause is the image to be created, which is in the mind of the sculptor… The moving or the efficient cause is the sculptor who does the work… and the final cause is the purpose for the whole operation.
Edinger explicates Aristotle's four causes and maps them onto the Jungian psychological functions, aligning material, formal, efficient, and final causation with sensation, thinking, feeling, and intuition respectively.
Edinger, Edward F, The Psyche in Antiquity, Book One Early Greek Philosophy thesis
The expression cause of himself is by no means to be taken as meaning 'efficient cause': it means simply that the inexhaustible power of God is the cause or reason why he requires no cause.
Descartes distinguishes efficient cause from the formal or quasi-efficient cause applicable to God's self-grounding existence, showing cause to be an equivocal term requiring careful qualification in metaphysical contexts.
Descartes, René, Meditations on First Philosophy, 2008thesis
A 'sustaining' [sunektikon] cause is one during whose presence the effect remains and on whose removal the effect is removed. The sustaining cause is called synonymously the 'complete' [autoteles] cause, since it is self-sufficiently productive of the effect.
This passage systematizes the Stoic taxonomy of causes—preliminary, sustaining, auxiliary—distinguishing them by their temporal and conditional relationship to their effects.
A.A. Long and D.N. Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers, 1987supporting
Matter is inert in itself, requiring some dynamic from outside itself to move it along… the ultimate cause of this motion can only lie in something which is itself unmoved. That is Aristotle's position.
Edinger restates the Aristotelian doctrine of the unmoved mover as the ultimate efficient cause of all motion, relating it psychologically to the ego as the moved party in relation to the Self.
Edinger, Edward F., The Psyche in Antiquity, Book One: Early Greek Philosophy From Thales to Plotinus, 1999supporting
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, following Jung, treats causality as an inborn archetypal schema that structures all human attempts at explanation, from primitive animism through scientific reasoning.
Edinger, Edward F., The New God-Image: A Study of Jung's Key Letters Concerning the Evolution of the Western God-Image, 1996supporting
At the beginning of each world cycle a causal nexus is providentially planned and initiated, in virtue of which all subsequent events are determined.
Chrysippus's strong determinism posits a providentially ordained causal nexus inaugurated at the start of each cosmic cycle, from which all subsequent events follow of necessity.
A.A. Long and D.N. Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers, 1987supporting
By conceding that there is no motion without a cause, they would not be conceding that all events were the result of antecedent causes. For our volition has no external antecedent causes.
This passage distinguishes between universal causation and strict external determinism, arguing that voluntary action may have causes without having prior external antecedent causes.
A.A. Long and D.N. Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers, 1987supporting
Nothingness cannot be the efficient cause of any thing.
Descartes articulates a foundational axiom of causal metaphysics—ex nihilo nihil fit as applied to efficient causation—as a directly known proposition grounding his proof of God's existence.
Descartes, René, Meditations on First Philosophy, 2008supporting
Temporal priority is not essential to it is apparent from the fact that something enjoys the status of a cause only for so long as it is producing its effect.
Descartes argues that efficient causation does not require temporal priority over the effect, a position that opens space for his analogical concept of God as formal or quasi-efficient cause of his own existence.
Descartes, René, Meditations on First Philosophy, 2008supporting
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 contrasts mechanistic causality—tracing effects back to prior causes—with the energic or finalistic viewpoint, positioning both as indispensable but partial perspectives on psychic events.
Jung, Carl Gustav, The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, 1960supporting
Each springs into being carrying with it the reason of its being. No result of chance, each must rise complete with its cause; it is an integral and so includes the excellence bound up with the cause.
Plotinus argues that within the Intellectual-Principle each Idea is self-caused in that it contains its own reason for being, so that nothing within it is accidental or externally caused.
Providence will be god's will, and furthermore his will is the series of causes. In virtue of being his will it is providence. In virtue of also being the series of causes it gets the additional name 'fate'.
The Stoic identification of providence with the causal series equates divine will, fate, and causation as three descriptions of a single providential order governing the cosmos.
A.A. Long and D.N. Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers, 1987supporting
In God there is no distinction between essence and existence. Therefore we can look for an efficient cause in connection with God. But… this formal cause bears a marked analogy to an efficient cause, and can therefore be termed a quasi-efficient cause.
Descartes resolves the paradox of God as self-cause by introducing the concept of a quasi-efficient or formal cause, applicable where essence and existence are identical.
Descartes, René, Meditations on First Philosophy, 2008supporting
The essay itself is difficult and certainly deeply flawed by a misguided effort at statistical analysis… Synchronicity and Causality.
Stein positions Jung's synchronicity essay as a sustained engagement with the limits of causality, noting both its theoretical ambition and its empirical difficulties.
Stein, Murray, Jung's Map of the Soul: An Introduction, 1998supporting
Causality has been accepted in some form in all civilizations.
Von Franz situates the causal principle as a cross-cultural cognitive universal before proceeding to examine how synchronicity demands its qualification.
von Franz, Marie-Louise, Psyche and Matter, 2014supporting
The view is that the chain of causation runs through oneself, not that it is broken.
Graver clarifies that Stoic compatibilism locates moral responsibility within the causal chain rather than outside it, making self-causation the ground of rational agency.
Margaret Graver, Stoicism and Emotion, 2007supporting
There is no teleology, no determinism, no finalism.
Hillman's account of formative moments in a life explicitly rejects both causal determinism and teleological finalism, positioning the daimonic image as a non-causal organizing principle.
Hillman, James, The Soul's Code: In Search of Character and Calling, 1996aside
Since all effects depend upon a cause, and receive their existence from that cause, is it not clear that one and the same being cannot depend on itself, or receive its existence from itself?
An objector to Descartes presses the classical axiom that no being can be its own efficient cause, challenging the coherence of the Cartesian notion of God as self-grounding.
Descartes, René, Meditations on First Philosophy, 2008aside
A far more fundamental causal relation operates within any single body between its active and passive aspects or components… At the most basic level, this is the causal operation of the active principle god, on the passive principle matter.
Stoic physics locates the most fundamental causal operation not in external interactions but in the internal relation of active principle (god/breath) to passive principle (matter) within every body.
A.A. Long and D.N. Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers, 1987aside
Determinism and moral responsibility are not merely compatible, they actually presuppose each other.
Stoic ethics is shown to require rather than merely tolerate determinism, since moral responsibility is grounded in the causal continuity of rational character through the self.
A.A. Long and D.N. Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers, 1987aside