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Atom and Archetype: The Pauli/Jung Letters
- Type
- Book
- By
- C. G. Jung and Wolfgang Pauli
- Publisher
- Princeton University Press
- Source
- Princeton University Press
- Published
- 2001
The letters between Jung and the physicist Wolfgang Pauli, who kept returning to the idea that psyche and matter might not be fully separate.
For twenty-six years, a psychiatrist and a Nobel physicist wrote to each other about the one thing neither could settle: whether psyche and matter are ultimately separate. This volume collects the Pauli–Jung letters, edited by C. A. Meier and published by Princeton University Press in 2001, and it reads like a high-wire act between two disciplines.
Pauli pushed Jung to make the idea of synchronicity sharper; Jung pushed Pauli to take dreams and symbols seriously. What emerges is the strongest single data point for treating synchronicity as more than a fad — one of the twentieth century's great physicists argued about it for decades. The skeptic's answer stands too: a correspondence is not an experiment, and Pauli never demonstrated the link he suspected.
It is my personal opinion that in the science of the future reality will neither be 'psychic' nor 'physical' but somehow both and somehow neither.
The meaning
Pauli, a Nobel physicist, took synchronicity seriously enough to argue about it for decades. That is the strongest single data point for treating the idea as more than a fad.
The skeptic
A correspondence is not evidence. Pauli never proved a link between mind and matter, and his openness to Jung's ideas is often read as the exception, not the rule.
About the author
Letters between Jung and Nobel physicist Wolfgang Pauli, edited by C. A. Meier.
Key takeaways
- Twenty-six years of letters between a psychiatrist and a Nobel physicist.
- Pauli pushed Jung to sharpen the idea; Jung pushed Pauli toward the psyche.
- The correspondence shows synchronicity was argued over seriously, not just asserted.