Carl Jung Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Carl Jung - Essay Example Here he learned the discipline of careful and faithful recording of his work and started on his series of experiments, the word associations, which were to bring him the first ray of fame. (Anthony Daniels, Carl Jung) Word associations' experiments in brief constituted of asking the subject to respond with first word that came into subject's mind, in response to a word by Carl Jung. While the subject was responding Carl would record the subject's change in heart beat and respiratory rates as well as changes in skin conductivity (skin conductivity changes along with emotional arousal as this state leads to increase in body's sweat). Carl would thus be able to monitor and gauge which words would gauge which words would cause the most arousal. His next accomplishment was building theory of archetypes and collective consciousness - this theory was formed of thinking in imagery or undirected thinking and he believed that collective unconscious had many such archetypical forms (Anthony Daniels, Jung's idea of causality starts off by laying down the three basic requirements: Causes must precede effects, causes and effects must occur concomitantly, the effects from the concerned cause should occur continually and should not be one off. He further builds up and mentions causal events as obeying the natural laws and following the "scientific truths" while acausal events follow a pattern of "instant discontinuity" or beyond reason. The synchronicity theory bridges this reality gap and aims to present a more holistic picture of our world. (Lance Storm, Synchronicity, Causality and Acausality.) Jung defines synchronicity as occurrence of two or more events with a meaningful connection between them and there is no causal link. The meaningful connection constraint is very important as this removes coincidence. For Jung, synchronous event remains so irrespective of recognition of concerned event as meaningful (Lance Storm, Synchronicity) and also this event involves an archetype. Archetype is the connection, however amorphous may it be, that links the two events and enjoins them with a shared theme. Archetype according to Jung is the pivot points or building blocks of the collective unconscious that impinge on and determine behavior patterns. Victor Mansfield says, collective unconscious is according to Jung a neutral entity and further Jung says that synchronicity does not preclude causality and synchronicity is an Carl Jung 3 indispensable counterpart to causality. Acausal connections are really no connections, as perceived by our ingrained thinking and commitment to causality. (Victor Mansfield, The Rhine-Jung letters). Jung considers synchronicity as a special minor offshoot of "general acausal orderness" and par psychological phenomenon should also be considered in this domain. Paraphysicological phenomenon are acausal because there realizable exchange of energy or information which connects the similarities or correlations