If I were going to have my dreams analyzed by a psychiatrist, I would choose Bernard Beitman, a visiting professor of psychiatry at the University of Virginia. Never mind that he claims he is no expert in dreams. He’s a Jungian, who also happens to be the first psychiatrist since Jung to embark on a serious study of synchronicity. His book, Connecting with Coincidence, will be published in March 2016, by the same folks who published Chicken Soup of the Soul.
Dr. Beitman also blogs for Psychology Today, where this particular article appeared.
Beitman believes that coincidences can be useful to psychotherapists in their treatment of patients. As he develops his coincidence studies, he looks to the usefulness of coincidences. “I analyze the role people play in creating their own coincidences. While shaping this previously abstract, philosophical topic into a more solid science, magic is not lost on me. In fact, it is that transcendental feeling created by coincidences that started my quest. I suppose this is the case to a certain degree in all scientific exploration,” he writes.
When Beitman was in his late twenties, he felt like a kid who had found his way into a “strange new land that it seemed few people had visited.” Sound familiar? You bet. Many of us who experience synchronicity have felt this very thing. Bernard writes that he felt like he’d wandered into the “Coincidence Forest,” where magic resonated. “I ran back through the tunnel to tell other people what I saw. Most of them did not know what I was talking about.”
Years ago, I recall saying this very thing to my former college roommate. “Don’t you ever wonder how it all fits together?” I asked.
She was a family court judge at the time, a woman who determined whether you would get custody of your children, how your joint assets would be split in the divorce, that kind of meaty, fundamental stuff. And she replied, “Sure. I wonder. But I don’t obsess about it, Trish.”
And yes, maybe there is some obsession in here about synchronicity. It’s such a strange but familiar phenomenon that when it happens repeatedly in your life, aren’t you compelled to figure it out? Or, at the least, to figure out what it means for you?
When Beitman was younger, he woke up choking one night. He later found out that it happened at the exact time that his father was choking to death in his home thousands of miles away. His name for this type of synchroncity is simulpathity – feeling another’s distress at a distance. It’s synchronicity and empathy slamming together at the same moment. Mothers often experience this kind of thing with their children. Identical twins experience it, as we wrote about here. But any of us can experience it with people we love.
For Jung, this journey started with the scarab beetle that appeared on the window of his office just as a patient was relating a dream about such a beetle. He opened the window, a beautiful symbolic gesture that enabled his patient to make the connection between her dreams and the real world.
As Beitman says: “Jung saw a need for ‘human understanding’ to break through his patient’s resistance to his treatment. Though it isn’t clear what ‘human understanding’ meant to Jung in this case, we can infer that it contrasts with the excessive rationality that Jung says characterized the patient. It is clear that he sees the coincidence as a way of achieving his therapeutic goal.”
In his study of coincidence, Beitman has found that its creation “favors the prepared mind.” In other words are you open and receptive to meaningful coincidence?
Jung, says Beitman, was a conduit for the scarab coincidence. “Had he not opened the window and let the beetle in, the connection might never have been made between the woman’s inner and outer worlds. The scarab beetle also had significance for Jung. It had appeared previously as a symbol in his own visions. Perhaps this added to his instrumental role in creating the coincidence.”
What Beitman hopes to do with his book and with Coincidence Studies is to illustrate how meaningful coincidence is an actual force that enables us to live more creative, happy, and loving lives.
Sounds good to me. I cant wait to read his book!
HAPPY THANKSGIVING TO ALL OUR FRIENDS IN THE U.S. !!
I’ve noticed that when something significant is happening in my life, there are multiple synchronicities. When life seems “quiet”, I don’t notice them happening. However, I haven’t decided if the synchros only happen in those clusters when something unusual is going on, or if they actually are happening all the time but I’m just not necessarily paying attention, because occasionally even during the quieter times, synchros will cluster. Seems I have to somehow be more “tuned in” during the quiet times.
Great post! I would like to read his book also.
I guess because I’ve spent time at Lilydale and elsewhere studying Spiritualism and mediumship, I think so often of synchronicity as guidance and spirit contact, and the fact that Jung came from a family of mediums, lived in time when spiritualism was in its heyday, and was himself highly mediumistic is often overlooked or not mentioned by academics, who seem to find it difficult to integrate.
I really like what he says about the prepared mind. I find that when I’m home in my mundane world with all of its responsibilities, so few synchros happen – its as if I’m a closed circuit, preoccupied. But when I travel, or find myself in the middle of an emotional storm of some kine, then the synchronicities come, often in clusters. Perhaps it’s as if I’m saying “channel open now”……….
I came across this post just before mentioning in a comment to Rob’s refugee boat that I had received anonymously in the mail a bumper sticker saying”Jesus was a refugee.” Then had the opportunity to give a few dollars to a Middle Eastern man who had lost his job. It was the last cash I had on me. I saw another man a few days earlier and passed him by thinking I needed the money for something else. I found the something else.
Great story, Ray! Hope your Thanksgiving was peaceful!
He put some of my synchro a on his blog, haven’t asked yet if any are in his book. Do your synchros come in clusters where you may have one or two a day for a while and then maybe none for a couple of weeks?
Definitely!
Great post (and hope you had a Happy Thanksgiving). Like that expression ‘Coincidence Forest’ for that is how it seems at times, we are surrounded by them – perhaps guiding us along the most effective route.