arguments between these one time colleagues over

MY FIRST PROFESSIONAL JOURNAL BOOK REVIEW Self, the Personal Unconscious, and the Creative Processby Gibbs A. Williams Lanham, MD: Jason Aronson, 2010. 319 pp. ISBN 978 0 7657 0702 4(hardcover); ISBN 978 0 7657 0704 8 (e book). $70.00, hardcover Reviewed byBernard D. BeitmanGibbs Williams, a Freudian psychoanalyst in New York City, has studied meaningfulcoincidences for more than 40 years through personal experiences and observations of his psychotherapy patients. In his early years he studied meaningful coincidences through occult perspectives, seeking the mystical through these hard to explain events.As his understanding evolved, Women Ralph Lauren he found himself more aligned with Mens Puma Future Cat Shoes Freud than with Jung,invoking the early 20th century arguments between these one time colleagues over the place of mysticism in the evolution of psychoanalysis. Freud with sexuality played an important role in Jung desire for separation, but Freud also warned against the tide of the mud of occultism, (p. x), which Jung was determined to embrace.Williams continues the Freud argument by offering intriguing evidence for Jung personal need to develop a mystical theory arising from his early separation from his mother. Williams also provides compelling arguments against Jung notion Mens Puma Tour Cat Lo L of acausality,which was central to Jung understanding of synchronicity.Acausality became for Jung away of explaining how two apparently random events could be meaningfully connected.During his career Jung offered different definitions of synchronicity (for a thoroughreview, see Clark, 1997). Like Jung, Williams defines a meaningful coincidence as two parallel events that take place closely in time: One event is intrapsychic, and the other is external outside the self. For Williams, a pair of similar events becomes a meaningful coincidence because the subjective observer declares them to form a meaningful coincidence. For Jung, the activated archetype infuses the coincidence with meaning.Williams exclusive emphasis upon a thorough analysis of a subject priorexperiences makes Self, the Personal Unconscious, and the Creative Process unique in coincidence studies. The person past history, current context, and crucial psychological challenges together increase the likelihood of a coincidence emerging with the purpose of helping the person resolve a currently intractable dilemma. The coincidence is created by connecting an unconscious element with a conscious need to find a solution.For Williams, the coincidence prone patient is stuck in preoedipal timelessness, seeking merger with a mother who was not available. Mens Puma Future Cat Shoes Jung becomes his prototype. With his mother in a sanatorium when he was three years old and a cold and distant father, Jung developed a theory that reflected his personal need for union with the great oneness.In his patients and in himself, Williams sees this longing for connection as afundamental driver to find brief mystical union, to merge self with other out of an early childhood predisposition to find connectiveness. He resonates with Freud: powers are to be sought in the depth of the psychic life, and psychoanalysis is destined to clarify this problem in the same manner in which it has previously clarified other happenings in the human psyche (p. 199).What are the data from which Williams theorizes? He critically reviews Jung paradigmatic scarab. A patient who was highly resistant to his interpretations had a dream of being handed a golden scarab. While she was discussing her dream, a similar golden beetle buzzed at the window of Jung office. He opened the window, caught the beetle, Men Ralph Lauren Stripe Polo and handed it to the woman, saying, is your scarab. According to Jung, her resistances broke down. Williams criticizes Jung for missing many elements of standard Women Ralph Lauren Olympics psychoanalytic treatment: What was the nature of the patient resistance? What follow up effect did this intervention have? Wasn this experience highly important to Jung? Why was this event notdated, as was much of Jung other case material (pp. Unlike Jung, he provides extensive, detailed contexts for each one. However, he pays little attention to the quality of these meaningful coincidences. He pays far more attention to the meaning they generate than to the coincidences themselves. The coincidence triggers an emotional response that activates self awareness, activates the search for something meaningful, Mens Puma Michael Schumacher and drives the search for a solution to the intractable problem that (Williams believes) helps create the fertile ground for coincidence emergence. He emphasizes the human need for mirroring reflections, smiles from intimateothers, sympathy, understanding shows how coincidences provide a direct form of mirroring through the environment.In Robert Perry (2009) study of coincidence, detailed definition and objectivityguide coincidence finding. The Mens Puma Fur Shoes two parallel events must have numerous similarities to qualify, and outside observers should be able to agree upon interpretations. Williams takes the opposite tack. Concerning a possible coincidence experienced by Patient D, he states, aren interested in what anyone else feels about this event D (p. 270).In declaring that only D feelings are important, Williams reduces the Mens Puma Mummy Shoes objectivedefinition of meaningful coincidence to idiosyncratic inconsistency and partially negates the science he is claiming to extend. His theories have no consistent connection between the content of the coincidence and the interpretation except that which he or his patients declare to be relevant.Williams book extends coincidence studies in a much needed way. He insists thatwe do not jump immediately to collective unconscious, fate, and Higher Powers to explain coincidences. He urges us to stay here on earth and to look into our own psyches for the coincidences we see radical personal responsibility. Yet, some coincidences seem so strange, so weird, that personally driven healing provides an unsatisfactory explanation.One of his coincidences could be explained by precognition: He had a fantasy about a building being gone and then soon afterwards found one of his favorite coffee places burned down (p.206).Coincidence research indicates that there may be many origins and many functions. Origins may Mens Puma Fluxion II Shoes include the following: (a) random events; (b) in large populations, low probability events regularly occur of large numbers (c) psi (telepathy, clairvoyance, Psyc CRITIQUES 1554 0138 precognition); (d) group mind; (e) mind connections; (f) acausal connecting