The Quantum Psyche: Spirit Matters Between Pauli and Jung

Abstract

Dennis Patrick Slattery, “The Quantum Psyche: Spirit Matters Between Pauli and Jung,” The San Francisco Jung Institute Library Journal, 2005, 24:3, 29- 34. Review of David Lindorff, Pauli and Jung: The Meeting of Two Great Minds, Wheaton, Ill, Quest Books, 2004. David Lindorff's study explores and defines a fine friendship between Wolfgang Pauli and C. G. Jung. The basis of this intimate relation is the quantum physics that Pauli helped to pioneer and the sustained interest of Jung in psyche's extended range in matter and in spirit. It is as well a study in synchronicity, for both men, each in his own respective field, seemed to have found the same material and psychic groove in which to uncover some basic structures of the psychological and physical worlds. Lindorff tracks with ease and precision the contours of these respective terrains and, in so doing, offers a portrait of both men in the form of a more intimate form of communication: letter writing. The reader sees thereby a less guarded, more open and even affectionate side of both men as they struggle to see how the world of opposites is more illusory than true, and that below the surface of both psyche and physics lies a fundamental unity, a veritable unus mundus.

Key Words:

• Wolfgang Pauli
• C. G. Jung
• quantum
• Pauli Exclusion Principle
• synchronicity
• unus mundus