Synchronicity and Other Mind Matter Conjectures

This program, co-sponsored by The Jungian Psychoanalytic Association and The Helix Center is free and open to the public.  Pre-registration is required.

For more information, consult the JPA website www.nyjung.org or contact Allison Tuzo at JPA@nyjung.org

How are mind and matter related? In the mid-20th century, the psychiatrist and analyst Carl Gustav Jung and the Nobel Laureate physicist Wolfgang Pauli formulated the concept of synchronicity. They sought a philosophical answer to this still unsolved question of how the mental and material, the physical and psychological are related in time. Pauli and Jung’s thesis suggests two types of mind-matter correlations for synchronistic experiences in which meaning is crucial and pivotal.

In this second roundtable on The Pauli-Jung Conjecture,” moderated by Beverley Zabriskie, Harald Atmanspacher and Joseph Cambray will further the April 2014 discussion at the Helix Center (video at www.helixcenter.org/videos/#/03Nq6MCh5Rc ). Edgar Choueiri and Farzad Mahootian will argue its central thesis, that the mental and the material are two complementary and intersecting aspects of one underlying reality. Atmanspacher will outline the speculations emerging from the conjecture’s “dual-aspect monism.” Using mental health care data, he will describe relevant psychophysical experiences from clinical settings. Cambray will discuss the significance of Atmanspacher's research for a re-visioning of contemporary analysis and psychotherapy. Mahootian engages complementarity as an organizing principle in physical and social contexts, specifically in research laboratory settings. Choueiri, whose work focuses on space plasma physics and space exploration, will bring to bear questions which arise from applied science: the potential epiphanic role the theory of synchronicity can play, and the possible degeneration into the apophenia dreaded in experimental physics.