Jeffrey Raff, Ph.D. is co-founder of the C.G. Jung Institute of Denver and a senior Jungian Analyst who has been in private practice in Denver since 1976. Trained in Zurich in the early 1970's Dr. Raff is the author of four books, including Jung and the Alchemical Imagination, The Wedding of Sophia, and The Practice of Ally Work. He has written many articles on alchemy, the Kabbalah, and the nature of evil. Currently President of the C.G. Jung Institute of Denver Dr. Raff is also an adjunct professor at Pacifica Graduate Institute and a Training Analyst in the Interregional Society of Jungian analysts. and has taught numerous workshops and classes all over the country.
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David
Replies
David, thank you for posting your very interesting interview with Dr. Raff on Synchronicity. My husband and I enjoyed listened to it together.
As I believe he mentioned to you, I am writing my dissertation on the experience of meaning that emerges around synchronicity, drawing from the perspective of complexity science.
I was a little disappointed that Dr. Raff did not say more about this, but perhaps he is not up to speed on the developments there. I am glad you found the book he mentions at the end of the interview, by Dr. Joseph Cambray, and hope that you will interview him in the future. In my opinion, the ideas that Dr. Cambray puts forward do in fact constitute a fairly radical reconceptualization of an aspect of Jung’s idea of synchronicity.
Dr. George Hogenson and Patricia Skar are both Jungian analysts who have also researched and published in this area, and whose research Cambray builds on. Of course the physicist F. David Peat wrote about synchronicity from a complexity science perspective quite a few years before their work came out. But I understand it is Skar’s work with Peter Saunders that reconceives the psyche, the archetype, synchronicity, and the Self as realizable moments along a scale of symbolic density that are constellated when the psyche undergoes certain critical phase transitions, or radical reorganization due to certain life stressors.
There have been I think two Synchronicity conferences held in London that I’ve only discovered after the fact. Hogenson has been a keynote speaker, as I believe has Cambray. I highly recommend any research you can find by Hogenson, Cambray, or Skar. Also Warren Colman, who is also from the UK.
There is also the Synchro Project with ongoing research in coincidence studies that you may find interesting.
Anyway, I look forward to more interviews from you on this fascinating subject – hopefully from some of the people mentioned above!
Cynthia
Hi Cynthia,
Only today did I discover your blog in DepthPsychologyAlliance related to synchronicity, and I posted two messages there with a suggestion.
Thank you, Cynthia. As a matter of fact, I got right on the ball after seeing Thom's post to me and located Dr. Cambray on the web and sent him an invite. He says he's interested if we can find the right date/time for him, which I feel confident we can inasmuch as I can be quite flexible. :-) I appreciate all the background you've provided me with here. I'll do my best to follow the scent. :-)
David
Excellent! Dr. Cambray is connected with all the others I mentioned so having him should cover their areas as well. I look forward to it!
It's looking like we'll do the interview in the latter part of June and it will probably be released in late June or early July. Thanks for the encouragement!
Thanks for sharing this delightful interview. It was a warm, conversational overview of synchronicity. I would welcome a follow up to this discussion that is less introductory and goes further into the subject. While Dr. Raff did a nice job I didn't get the impression that he is up-to-date with the latest, cutting edge research on synchronicity; not recalling Joseph Cambray's work was a clue. He also didn't mention the broader context of acausal ordering, one of the few major projects Jung handed off to von Franz before his death. Von Franz's work in this area alone is worth a full interview.
I think I'll see if I can get Joseph Cambray on as a guest. Thanks for this lead.
Thanks for this feedback. Is there a chance you'd make a good guest on this topic?
Actually, my wife Cynthia is doing her doctoral research on synchronicity, relating it to emergence, dreams, phase transition, systems theory, etc. My subject, which I have written two books on, is alchemical psychology. If that interests you, take a look at my websites Cavalli Books and Alchemy, and let me know if it would be suitable for your show. You can also listen to the two interviews I've done with Bonnie for DPA. You can contact me at illavac@hotmail.com. Best, TFC