Synchronicity, Acausal Connection, and the Fractal Dynamics of Clinical Practice

ABSTRACT

Psychoanalysts have written about synchronicity, or meaningful coincidence, from the beginning of the field, yet the topic remains controversial and relegated to the edges of clinical work and research due to lack of a scientific framework. This paper presents a way to conceptualize resonant patterning between inner and outer processes derived from the mathematics of fractal geometry. Considered the “geometry of nature” since its inception, nonlinear fractal models, methods, and metaphors reach beyond reductionism, Cartesian dualism, and traditional linear notions of causality to accommodate porous, interpenetrating boundaries between inner and outer domains as well as self-similar relational patterns. A fractal epistemology is sturdy yet flexible enough to accommodate paradox, ambiguity, uncertainty plus other complex, fuzzy processes of the ordinary analytic experience. Clinical examples also illustrate that fractal framework applies more broadly to the occasional extra-ordinary experience of synchronicity and other “uncanny” nonlocal phenomena in clinical work.

This article is referred to by:

Can We Sing Potatoes? Primary Substrates, Synchronicity, and Fractal Dynamics in Clinical Practice

Discussion: “Synchronicity, Acausal Connection, and the Fractal Dynamics of Clinical Practice”

Notes

¹ Psi or psychophysical phenomena relate to direct access to veridical information about objective or subjective events. It includes extra-sensory perception, (ESP) including telepathy, clairvoyance/remote awareness, and precognition; and direct intentionality, including psychokinesis (PK) and retrocausality. They are considered to be the subject of parapsychology, a term introduced by J. B. Rhine in 1937. More recently, Princeton physicists Robert Jahn and Brenda Dunne (2011) categorized psychophysical phenomena in informational terms, differentiating between information extraction (ESP) and information insertion (PK).

² Nonlocality refers to spacetime-independent correlations in entangled quantum systems, where one part of the system is instantaneously affected by the measurement of another part, irrespective of the physical distance between them. This violation of locality was the subject of Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) paper, which referred to nonlocal effects as “spooky action at a distance.” Multiple experimental verifications have since demonstrated that our universe is fundamentally nonlocal, and entanglement can occur on molecular scale; however, it cannot be used to transmit information at superluminal speeds (Gisin, 2009).

³ Both quantum laws and special relativity forbid any usable information transmission via nonlocal routes. Entanglement is best conceptualized not as a transmitting/receiving process but as nonlocal correlations between discrete states of an entangled system, which transcend local-interactive dynamics in space-time. While in the classical macro-world such quantum properties have been largely ignored, it is becoming increasingly clear that a wide range of biological systems, including synaptic transmission, utilize quantum processes. The matter/mind distinction is only relevant in the classical macro-world, while informational processes span the quantum-classical boundary and underlie both neural network dynamics and experiential phenomenology of subjective experience.

⁴ For a more dynamic experience of a Mandelbrot set zoom, go to YouTube, where there are numerous examples, e.g., https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ujvy-DEA-UM.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Terry Marks-Tarlow

Terry Marks-Tarlow, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist in private practice in Santa Monica, California, who teaches and trains through the Insight Center, Los Angeles, Pacifica Graduate Institute, Santa Barbara, California, and California Institute of Integral Studies, San Francisco, California.

Yakov Shapiro

Yakov Shapiro, M.D., is a clinical professor of psychiatry, psychotherapy supervisor, and director of the integrated psychotherapy/psychopharmacology service (IPPS) at the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada.