Editing Carl Jung (section)

=== Inquiries into the paranormal ===

Jung had an apparent interest in the paranormal and occult. For decades he attended [[seance]]s and claimed to have witnessed "parapsychic phenomena". Initially, he attributed these to psychological causes, even delivering a 1919 lecture in England for the Society for Psychical Research on "The Psychological Foundations for the belief in spirits".<ref name="Jung1997">{{cite book|author=Carl Gustav Jung|title=Jung on Synchronicity and the Paranormal|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=usrGSaO7QosC|year=1997|publisher=Psychology Press|page=6|isbn=978-0-415-15509-0}}</ref> However, he began to "doubt whether an exclusively psychological approach can do justice to the phenomena in question"<ref name="Jung1997"/> and stated that "the spirit hypothesis yields better results".<ref name="Carl Gustav Jung 1997 7">{{cite book|author=Carl Gustav Jung|title=Jung on Synchronicity and the Paranormal|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=usrGSaO7QosC|year=1997|publisher=Psychology Press|page=7|isbn=978-0-415-15509-0}}</ref> But he retained some skepticism toward his own postulation, as he could not find material evidence of the existence of spirits.<ref name="Carl Gustav Jung 1997 7"/>

Jung's ideas about the paranormal culminated in "[[synchronicity]]".<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Nickell |first1=Joe |author-link=Joe Nickell |title="Visitations": After-Death Contacts |journal=Skeptical Inquirer |date=September 2002 |volume=12 |issue=3 |url=https://www.csicop.org/sb/show/visitations_after-death_contacts |access-date=8 August 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180808203007/https://www.csicop.org/sb/show/visitations_after-death_contacts |archive-date=8 August 2018}}</ref>  This is the idea that certain coincidences manifest in the world, have exceptionally intense meaning to observers.  Such coincidences have a great effect on the observer from multiple cumulative aspects: from the immediate personal relevance of the coincidence to the observer, from the peculiarities of (the nature of, the character, novelty, curiosity of) any such coincidence; from the sheer improbability of the coincidence, having no apparent causal link (hence Jung's essay subtitle "An Acausal Connecting Principle").  Despite his own experiments failing to confirm the phenomenon<ref name="ShermerLinse2002">{{cite book|author1=Michael Shermer|author2=Pat Linse|title=The Skeptic Encyclopedia of Pseudoscience|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Gr4snwg7iaEC&pg=PA241|year=2002|publisher=ABC-CLIO|pages=240–241|isbn=978-1-57607-653-8}}</ref> he held on to the idea as an explanation for apparent [[Extrasensory perception|ESP]].<ref name="Jung2013">{{cite book|author=C. G. Jung|title=Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=x-Rxhf2gUa8C&pg=PA27|date=15 April 2013|publisher=Routledge|isbn=978-1-134-96845-9|page=27}}</ref> In addition, he proposed it as a functional explanation for how the [[I-Ching]] worked. However, he was never clear about how synchronicity worked.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Sullivan |first1=Charles |title=Whats Wrong with the I Ching? Ambiguity, Obscurity, and Synchronicity |journal=Skeptical Inquirer |date=August 2009 |volume=33 |issue=4 |url=https://www.csicop.org/si/show/whats_wrong_with_the_i_ching_ambiguity_obscurity_and_synchronicity |access-date=8 August 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171214171807/https://www.csicop.org/si/show/whats_wrong_with_the_i_ching_ambiguity_obscurity_and_synchronicity |archive-date=14 December 2017}}</ref>