How Do Rare and Common Synchronicities Differ? | Psychology ...
Many synchronicities seem unique to the person experiencing them. Is their unique-seeming coincidence also rare among the broad range of meaningful coincidences? Or are some of them like black swans in that one rare synchronicity points toward many of the same type? Black swans are native to Australia and were first documented by Europeans in the 17th century. Their discovery challenged the long-standing European belief that all swans were white. This discovery led to the metaphor of the “black swan” to describe an unexpected event that can signal a large number of the same type. Are certain improbable coincidences, like black swans, harbingers of much larger numbers? Or do some of them represent a very small number of reported synchronicities?
Reciprocal Life-Saving Events
Reciprocal life-saving events are among the more compelling forms of coincidence: One person saves another’s life, only to have their life saved by the rescued person later on.
- One Good Tourniquet Deserves Another: Allen Falby was a highway patrolman in Texas...their connection full circle.
- The Policeman and the Paramedic: A police officer saved a man’s life by applying a tourniquet...
In psychotherapy, synchronicities often manifest in ways that seem deeply meaningful to both therapist and patient. These experiences can provide insight, validation, or breakthroughs in therapy.
Examples of Synchronicities in Psychotherapy
- Jung’s Scarab: One of Carl Jung’s most famous examples of synchronicity involves a patient who was at a critical impasse in her therapy...
- Marlo’s Bird: Jungian analyst Helen Marlo described a patient who wanted to be a bird...
- Hotel California: A patient was discussing an internal conflict between his musician identity and intellectual pursuits during a session...
- The Book Synchronicity: Counselor Rolf Gordhamer described another client-counselor experiential mirror...
Common coincidences like “thinking of someone and they contact you” or “thinking of a song and hearing it on the radio” are composed of common, everyday events—phone calls, text messages, radios, and songs. Rare coincidences involve highly specific and unusual events that don’t align with everyday experiences.
Common coincidences can be explained in several different ways, including the person’s tendency to find matching events in their environment. Rare coincidences are unlikely to be based on prior expectations and needs. This difference suggests that rare synchronicities require different explanations.
Differentiating rare from common coincidences will help in the development of a science of synchronicity. By characterizing the differences, we can improve our understanding of the statistical and other explanations for their occurrences.
It is likely that many rare coincidences have not been reported. This use of AI is limited to those synchronicities that are accessible on the web. The stories of reciprocal life-saving events and the synchronicities in psychotherapy seem to point toward a form of connectivity or meaningful alignment between events.
Further research, possibly involving larger datasets and more rigorous methodologies, would be needed to explore these phenomena more deeply. Until then, these rare coincidences remain powerful reminders of the mysteries that continue to elude our full understanding, inviting us to ponder the complex and often surprising ways in which our lives intersect with the world around us and with each other.
