Carl Jung (1875-1961)
Typed letter signed (‘C.G. Jung’) to Dr [John Raymond] Smythies, [Küsnacht], 29 February 1952
In English. 3.5 pages, 295 x 209mm, headed letter-paper, Greek characters and a small number of corrections added in ink. Provenance: Sotheby's, 21 November 1989, lot 283.

An essay setting out his definition of synchronicity in the context of Einsteinian physics. Jung hardly dares write to the editor of the [Journal of the Society for Psychical Research], professing his English too poor: ‘Amongst very learned and illustrious philosophers my simple argumentation would have no show. Moreover I know from experience, that philosophers don’t understand my uncouth language’. He prefers, therefore, to send something to Smythies for him to use as he see fit, setting down, in effect, an essay rich in scientific detail over three pages, attempting to define his concept of synchronicity in the context of Einsteinian physics.

Jung’s fascination with physics began with Albert Einstein, his guest at a series of dinners between 1909 and 1912. In a letter to Carl Seelig in 1953, Jung describes how Einstein, then developing his general theory of relativity, ‘tried to instil into us the elements of it, more or less successfully […] It was Einstein who first started me thinking about a possible relativity of time as well as space, and their psychic conditionality. More than 30 years later this stimulus led to my relation with the physicist Professor W. Pauli and to my thesis of psychic synchronicity’. John Raymond Smythies (1922-2019) was a British neuropsychiatrist, neuroscientist and neurophilosopher who developed the first specific biochemical theory of schizophrenia; his research was inspired by the remarkable effects of mescaline on the human brain and the interdisciplinary work of Albert Schweitzer. He worked for one year as a resident in the electroencephalogram department at the National Hospital, London.