Beyond Jung 2024 – Splitting the Mirror: A Shard of Synchronicity from a Historical and Personal Perspective

Splitting the Mirror: A Shard of Synchronicity from a Historical and Personal Perspective

with Dr Suzanne Gieser

Sunday, December 1, 2024
9am PST / 12pm EST / 5pm GMT / 6pm CET

Beyond Jung 2024, Session 2 of 6

This event is LIVE. All participants will receive the RECORDING.

The concept of synchronicity was developed by C. G. Jung and the physicist Wolfgang Pauli during the period 1946-1952 and finally published in the book The interpretation of Nature and Psyche, containing Jung’s essay on synchronicity and Pauli’s essay on the influence of archetypal ideas on the scientific theories of Kepler. For Pauli the book was in itself a synchronicity, a spiritual testament, almost like a holy book, whose content should never be ‘split’. Pauli’s personal experience of synchronicity was linked to the theme of accidents and the breaking of objects, the so called ‘Pauli-effect’, well known amongst his colleagues. With time it came to be more about the theme of mirroring, which also became important in the scientific field that he was working in. In my personal journey of 37 years of working with Pauli’s correspondence, there has been a peculiar parallel process of synchronicities also mainly expressing itself in objects splitting and systems breaking, as well as an emergence of a ‘mirroring’ theme. In my case the theme of splitting showed itself in a very numinous dream in 1982, long before I encountered the Pauli material. This lecture will probe into synchronicity from these angles.

Suzanne Gieser has a PhD in the History of Sciences (specialty history of psychiatry and psychotherapy) and is also a licensed psychotherapist and supervisor. She works both with a private practice and as employed at a specialist clinic for the sexually traumatized in Stockholm, Sweden. She has studied the psychology of C. G. Jung since 1981, especially the relationship between Jung and the physicist Wolfgang Pauli. Her book, The Innermost Kernel: Depth Psychology and Quantum Physics. Wolfgang Pauli’s Dialogue with C. G. Jung was published in English in 2005. She was a senior lecturer and associate professor for ten years at The Institute of Analytical Psychology (IAP), a private institute of Jungian scholarly studies in Stockholm, and has authored several articles and prefaces related to C. G. Jung and Wolfgang Pauli in Swedish and English, including the article on Jung in the Swedish National Encyclopedia. She is a member of the board at the Swedish C. G. Jung Foundation and is co-founder of the Swedish Association of Imago Therapy. She is the editor of Jung’s 1937 and 1938 seminars in Bailey Island and New York, published in 2019.