DIALOGUE

Hi everyone--I'm a new member here, invited by Bonnie Bright to join.  I am a Jungian psychotherapist in private practice since 1986 in Berkeley, and the author of quite a number of books in Jungian psychology over the years.

Bonnie thought this would be a good place to let you all know about my current project.  Since its original publication in 1997, my best-selling book, There Are No Accidents has continued to stimulate interest here in the US and around the world in Jung's notion of synchronicity and how the meaningful coincidences in the stories of lives work to make us who we are.

From the beginning of my research for that original book 20 years ago, I had in mind a second book, as there were many stories I had gathered at the time around synchronistic events that had occurred specifically with regard to families and familial relationships that didn't have a natural place in the first, more general and comprehensive look at synchronicity I was taking in "There are No Accidents."

So, as of 2016, I've begun The Great Coming Togther:  Synchronicity and the Stories of Our Families which will focus specifically on the psychological nature of our experience of family as disclosed by the amazing, unexpected, and even at times unwanted but fortuitous coincidences among family members that function to bring us to consciousness about who we are and where we belong in the world.

In particular, I'm interested in showing here how "family" is not just a biological given but is rather actually a very complex and multi-dimensional psychological construction of experience, in part conscious and chosen, in part unconscious and random--what Jung calls an archetype--which precisely is what the meaningfulness of synchronistic experiences make clear about the true nature of "family."

I'd like to hear from you, if you have had synchronistic experiences that have become part of your "family stories."  For example:

--how you met your spouse

--meaningful coincidences that have occurred between you and your children, parents, siblings or other relatives

--surprising and transformative similarities you may have discovered between yourself and relatives from whom you were long separated or even long-deceased ancestors you never even knew

--synchronistic events that occurred for you in the course of your pregnancy or the birth of your children or that happened in the course of a family member's death

--telepathic, telekinetic or otherwise psychic experiences between family members

--specific images or symbols that have acquired significance for your family, immediate or extended, for which there is no explanation other than pure chance.

It's best to send me an email at rob@symbolics.org if you'd like to share a story with me for possible inclusion in the eventual book.  And of course, feel free to check out my professional website, www.robhopcke.com

Thanks in advance and, as I have written for many years on many copies of There Are No Accidents, may your life continue to be enlightened by chance!

Rob Hopcke