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Synchronicity and the I Ching : Jung, Pauli, and the Chinese Woman
Author(s) -
Zabriskie Beverley
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
journal of analytical psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.285
H-Index - 23
eISSN - 1468-5922
pISSN - 0021-8774
DOI - 10.1111/j.0021-8774.2005.00525.x
Subject(s) - synchronicity , pauli exclusion principle , psyche , unconscious mind , nobel laureate , philosophy , psychoanalysis , reading (process) , literature , epistemology , psychology , art , poetry , physics , linguistics , quantum mechanics
The capacity of the human mind to discover and invent both imagistic analogies and mathematical structures to represent reality is strikingly juxtaposed in the ancient Chinese text of the I Ching . Its emphasis on containing all sorts of opposites and its plastic appeal to multi‐valenced experience has kept it alive through millennia and across cultures. Jung was introduced to its Taoist wisdom by the Sinologist Richard Wilhelm. The Nobel Laureate quantum physicist Wolfgang Pauli became familiar with its philosophy and mathematics through his reading of Schopenhauer and Leibniz. In their correspondence about the nature of the unconscious and synchronicity, Pauli and Jung also exchanged their musings on Pauli's dreams of a Chinese woman, her role in his psyche and his scientific theories 1 .