Within the depth-psychology corpus, ‘chance’ occupies a charged theoretical position that cuts across epistemology, physics, and the philosophy of mind. The term is never merely statistical. Jung’s most sustained engagement defines chance as the conceptual residue of causality’s limits: events designated ‘chance’ are so named precisely because their causal substrate has not yet been discovered — yet if causal law is only relatively valid, a genuine remainder of acausal events must exist. This remainder becomes the philosophical seedbed for synchronicity. Von Franz elaborates the same axis from the angle of quantum mechanics and Chinese cosmology: where Western science labors to eliminate chance through probability calculus, the Chinese oracular mind treats chance as primary, regarding the specific configuration of a singular moment as more significant than any ideal causal law. The surrealist tradition, as documented in Jung’s writings on art, appropriates chance aesthetically, reading it as a disclosure of hidden order. Hillman introduces the distinction between fate and fatalism, warning that surrendering all agency to ‘chance’ or ‘fate’ collapses into passivity. Stein synthesizes these threads through synchronicity: pattern appearing ‘purely by chance’ raises the question of whether such chance is meaningful or merely random. Across all these voices, chance is treated as the threshold between the causal and the acausal — the point where depth psychology makes its most ambitious metaphysical claim.
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 argues that a merely relative causal principle logically necessitates the existence of genuinely acausal chance events, establishing the theoretical ground for synchronicity.
, The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, 1960thesis
The Chinese mind, as I see it at work in the I Ching, seems to be exclusively preoccupied with the chance aspect of events. What we call coincidence seems to be the chief concern of this peculiar mind, and what we worship as causality passes almost unnoticed.
Von Franz contrasts Western causal thinking with the Chinese oracular mind, which elevates chance and coincidence to primary epistemological status.
, Psyche and Matter, 2014thesis
Between the two realms stands man, who sets the boards in motion. Here chance or freedom enters the game and the laws which govern it, though man is naturally also part of the whole coinciding situation.
Von Franz positions chance as the locus of human freedom within a cosmological framework that mediates between necessity and meaningful contingency.
, Psyche and Matter, 2014thesis
The suspicion that this must be a case of meaningful coincidence, i. e., an acausal connect
Jung’s fish-symbol cluster of events leads him to hypothesize that certain ‘chance’ groupings constitute meaningful coincidences irreducible to causal explanation.
, The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, 1960thesis
there is no causal reason for the pattern to appear. It comes about purely by chance. So the question arises: Is this chance event of patterning completely random or is it meaningful?
Stein identifies the central question synchronicity poses: whether pattern arising by chance is mere randomness or carries intrinsic meaning.
, Jung’s Map of the Soul: An Introduction, 1998supporting
the hypothesis of chance is always an asylum ignorantiae. Certainly no one will deny that very strange chance events do occur, but the fact that one can count with some probability on their repetition excludes their chance nature.
Jung dismisses the invocation of ‘chance’ as an epistemological refuge (‘asylum of ignorance’), arguing that repeatable anomalies preclude genuine randomness.
, The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, 1960supporting
the highly improbable coincidence of the inner and outer three tigers in this woman’s life seems to have no common cause, and therefore it inevitably struck her as ‘more than mere chance’ and somehow as ‘meaningful.’
Von Franz presents a clinical illustration in which the convergence of inner dream-image and outer event overwhelms any attribution to mere chance, pointing toward synchronicity.
, Psyche and Matter, 2014supporting
In these compositions it is chance that gives depth to the work of art; it points to an unknown but active principle of order and meaning that becomes manifest in things as their ‘secret soul.’
Jung reads the surrealist appropriation of chance in art as an intuitive disclosure of a hidden ordering principle operative beneath apparent randomness.
, Man and His Symbols, 1964supporting
The intention here is to eliminate chance to the greatest extent possible. The individual case is not considered in the probability concept.
Von Franz observes that probability calculus is structurally designed to neutralize chance, thereby systematically excluding the singular event that synchronicity takes as its subject.
, Psyche and Matter, 2014supporting
The three events form a chance grouping that, although not likely to occur often, nevertheless lies well within the framework of probability owing to the frequency of each of its terms.
Jung carefully distinguishes statistically improbable but explicable chance groupings from genuinely acausal coincidences, modeling the methodology required to sift the two.
, The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, 1960supporting
Hitherto, nothing but chance ruled the world, but since man has returned to his natural home on the earth his mind rules the world, and see how that works! More than ever, we are victims of mere chance.
Jung, reading Nietzsche, argues that the modern project of bringing rational mind to earth has paradoxically increased subjection to raw chance rather than mastered it.
, Nietzsche’s Zarathustra: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1934-1939, 1988supporting
if it is the acorn that gives the feeling that things could not be otherwise, that even the wrongs have been necessary, what do we mean by ‘necessity’? … we are likely either to abandon ourselves to fatalism or to abandon the book to fantasy.
Hillman interrogates the boundary between meaningful chance, necessity, and fatalism, warning that collapsing them produces either paralysis or intellectual irresponsibility.
, The Soul’s Code: In Search of Character and Calling, 1996supporting
Fatalism is the seductive other side to the heroic ego, which shoulders so much in a do-it-yourself, winner-take-all civilization.
Hillman distinguishes fate from fatalism, cautioning that over-attribution of events to chance or fate slides into the abdication of psychological responsibility.
, The Soul’s Code: In Search of Character and Calling, 1996supporting
if we attribute to chance the Principle which is to eliminate chance from all the rest, how can there ever be anything independent of chance?
Plotinus argues that invoking chance as a first principle is self-defeating: any ordering principle cannot itself be the product of chance without dissolving all order.
, The Six Enneads, 270supporting
synchronistic events form only momentary special instances in which the observer stands in a position to recognize the third, connecting element, namely the similarity of meaning in the inner and outer events.
Von Franz situates synchronicity in relation to acausal orderedness, distinguishing synchronistic events — singular meaningful coincidences — from broader patterns of acausal regularity.
, Psyche and Matter, 2014supporting
the seemingly contradictory notion of a Necessity which is also an Errant Cause, and associated, not with order and intelligibility, but with disorder and random chance.
The Timaeus anticipates the depth-psychological problem by locating chance within a cosmological frame as the irrational, errant cause opposed to teleological necessity.
, Plato’s cosmology the Timaeus of Plato, 1997aside
You might receive the 10 and king of spades from Dad, and the jack, queen, and ace of spades from Mom, cards that had never counted for much in either family tree but whose combination in you might produce… a new Olympic record.
Hillman uses the concept of genetic emergentism as an analogy for how unique configuration — neither pure chance nor strict determinism — produces individual destiny.
, The Soul’s Code: In Search of Character and Calling, 1996aside