Analytic Psychologist Carl Jung names synchronicity as an “acausal connecting principal” (Cambray, 411), which he contends connects psychic phenomena with happenings in the external world in meaningful ways. To examine one of my own experiences of synchronicity which was germane to my PhD project, I draw on Ross Gibson’s creative practice framework (Gibson, 3), ‘toggling’ between this particular example and a discussion of theories about how synchronicity occurs and unfolds.
The legacy of my synchronicity research is an expanded understanding of synchronicity, moving from a purely psychological standpoint to a broader understanding of it as a psycho-aesthetic occurrence. In its blurring of boundaries (temporally, and between self and world) it has contributed another source of meaning-making to my repertoire. Prior to undertaking research I considered that synchronicity just befell me, but now I know that certain orientations and conditions create a propensity for synchronicity generation.
It is hoped this essay with accompanying poems will become one chapter in a dedicated book arising out of my PhD research directed at a non-academic audience.
Read the poem + essay
Anne M Carson is an Australian poet, and essayist whose poetry has been published internationally, and widely in Australia, receiving numerous awards including longlisting for Fish International Poetry Prize (2023). Her fourth poetry book The Detective’s Chair was published Liquid Amber Press, 2023. In 2018 Anne started a Masters in Creative Writing at RMIT and upgraded in 2019 to a PhD, writing a poetic biography of French novelist and utopian socialist George Sand. She was awarded an Outstanding Dissertation Prize from the Visual and Performing Arts AERA SIG in 2024.