Remo F. Roth

Dr. oec. publ., Ph.D.

dipl. analyt. Psychologe (M.-L. v. Franz)


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With many thanks to Gregory Sova, Ph.D. (LA, CA) for translation assistance


Book Project:

THE RETURN OF THE WORLD SOUL 

Wolfgang Pauli, Carl Jung and the Challenge of the Unified Psychophysical Reality

 © copyright 2002-2004 by Pro Litteris, Zürich. All rights reserved

This book is intended for private use only, and is copyrighted under existing Internet copyright laws and regulations.


back to Chapter 5, part 2

 

 5. The Seal of Solomon and the unsolved problem of psyche's complementary incarnation

(part 3)

Contents: 

 

Part 1:

5.1 Wolfgang Pauli’s “mirror image of the Assumptio Mariae to below“ and the Seal of Solomon

Part 2:

5.2 Wolfgang Pauli’s and Carl Jung’s dispute about the terms psyche, matter and spirit

5.2.1 Philosophical cognition as a creation act

5.2.1.1 The symmetry and complementarity of spirit and matter and of the energy principle

5.2.1.2 Psyche as potential being

5.2.1.3 The separation of psyche and spirit and the superiority of psyche over matter and spirit

5.2.1.4 Carl Jung’s crux with the Seal of Solomon

5.2.1.5 Carl Jung’s approach: Philosophical cognition as a creation act

5.2.1.6 Carl Jung’s antagonistic definitions of the term “psyche”

5.2.1.7 Further clarification and summary

Part 3:

5.2.2 Quantum physical observation as a creation act

5.2.2.1 The quantum physical collapse of the wave function or quantum leap

5.2.2.2 The ending of the Neoplatonic infertility in the collapse of the wave function

5.2.2.3 Carl Jung’s conflict between a causal and an acausal theory of the psyche  

5.2.2.4 Wolfgang Pauli’s approach: Quantum physical observation as a creation act

5.2.2.5 The Nobel laureate’s isolation since 1935 because of his dreams about Eros and radioactivity  

5.2.2.6 Summary and prospects

Part 4a:

5.3 Synchronicity, the wave function’s collapse and the future incarnatio  

5.3.1 The collective psyche as being and as potential being  

5.3.2 The difference between synchronicity and the collapse of the wave function

Part 4b:

5.3.3 Jung’s and Pauli’s discussion about the future incarnatio

 

Part 5:

5.4 Wolfgang Pauli’s incarnatio synchronicity, the alchemical multiplicatio and psychophysical radioactivity  

5.4.1 Pauli’s nocturnal experience with the bursting meteorite after the discussion with Jung  

5.4.2 The creatio continua out of the unus mundus as the transformation of potential being into actual being  

5.4.3 The coniunctio as the background of the creatio continua  

5.4.4 The inclusion of the creatio continua and incarnatio into the description of the cosmic evolutionary processes  

Part 6:

5.4.5 The bursting meteorite, the alchemical process of the multiplicatio and the red tincture  

5.4.6 The multiplicatio of the red tincture and radioactivity  

Part 7:

5.4.7 Complementary versus psychophysical interpretation of the term “physical-symbolic radioactivity”  

5.4.8 Wolfgang Pauli’s regression into the complementary interpretation of the Taoist Yang/Yin

Part 8:

5.4.9 Carl Jung’s and Wolfgang Pauli’s concept of the complementary relationship between radioactivity and synchronicty

5.4.10 Wolfgang Pauli’s reduction of the multiplicatio to an attribute of synchronicity

Part 9:

5.4.11 Pauli’s and Jung’s dispute about the depth psychological difference between the terms “field” and “radioactivity”

5.4.12 Wolfgang Pauli’s depth psychological interpretation of the radioactive transmutation as a transition of the Self into a more conscious state  

Part 10 (not yet published):

5.4.13 Carl Jung’s and Wolfgang Pauli’s lack of understanding of the acausal transformation out of the unus mundus

5.4.14 Radioactivity as a psychophysical transmutation process in the unus mundus

Part 11 (not yet published):

5.4.15 Summary

5.4.16 Conclusions

 


  

5. The Seal of Solomon and the unsolved problem of psyche’s complementary incarnation

(part 3)

 

5.2.2 Quantum physical observation as a creation act

 

5.2.2.1 The quantum physical collapse of the wave function or quantum leap

Before I can go on with my argumentation, we must now clear up some quantum physical terms I used without further explanations. For this purpose we have to take a look at the epistemological background of quantum physics. 

Physical science consists in a systematic observation of empirically ascertainable facts, which are then theoretically generalized with the help of a mathematical law. The best example of such a behavior we find with Johannes Kepler (1571-1630). After he became the successor of Tycho Brahe (1546-1601) as the king’s astronomer in Prague, he used the latter’s empirical data for the formulation of his mathematical laws of planet’s motions, today well-known as the Kepler laws. Already before him, also with the help of empirical observation, Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) found the eventually mathematically formulated gravitation law. These two scientific masterstrokes of the 17th century helped Isaac Newton in finding his general laws of mechanics, formulated mathematically in his so-called equations of motion.  

Observation and measurement on the one hand and finding a mathematical law on the other serves therefore the formulation of a causal physical theory. If this step is successfully accomplished by someone and the theory is formulated, then anyone can apply these mathematical laws for the determination of a future or a past state of the system. The only necessary condition for the determination of such a state are the so-called initial conditions that must be measured, i.e., observed.  

This part of the scientific process one calls the measuring or the observation act. Generally speaking, such a measuring process in Newtonian physics is the determination of the four variables of time, position, momentum and energy of the body in motion. If these four variables are determined (measured, observed), Newton’s laws of motion allow one to determine any state of the body in the future and in the past. Therefore physics states that motion is causal or determined.  

In quantum physics however, there exists the so called uncertainty relation Werner Heisenberg found in the year 1925. It is a mathematical law expressing the fact that it is in principle impossible to measure all the four variables in exact terms during the measuring act. The stated uncertainty belongs to the two pairs of time and energy on the one hand, and of position and momentum on the other. This means that it is impossible to measure both, time and energy of an event, exactly. The same is true for the pair of position and momentum. If we measure, for example, the momentum as exactly as possible, the position of a particle is less certain and acts as if it is smeared out in space, i.e. we cannot find its exact place in space; or if the energy of a particle is determined as exactly as possible, the uncertainty of the time interval is infinite.  

In order to have a (strong) causal relationship between two states of the system, i.e., the conclusion that state A is the cause for state B that follows it, we must measure all the four variables exactly. It is obvious that only like this we can of course determine the exact state of the system with the help of a mathematical formula (Newton’s laws of motion). Because the exact measurement of all four variables necessary for the calculation of the causal development of the specific system, is impossible in principle, the uncertainty law also means that quantum physics is acausal or indeterministic.  

The circumstance of acausality is considered in mathematical terms through the so-called wave function or Schroedinger equation. As a mathematical term it is of course a causal or deterministic equation. The form of it is however choosen as a so-called linear combination of all potentially possible states of the system. In the moment of the observation this wave function however “collapses”, i.e., all the possible states except one disappear. We do however not know which one of all the potentially possible states becomes real. Therefore every single measuring or observation process is an acausal or indeterministic act. We will see that Wolfgang Pauli calls such a single observation a creation act.  

We can now connect the quantum physical observation act to the terms we discussed in the 3rd chapter. In Wolfgang Pauli’s terminology the causal but only potential wave function is potential being; the acausal or indeterministic result of every measurement is the actual being. Therefore, in the act of measurement the potential being becomes actual being, i.e., incarnated - the metaphysical hypothesis becomes an empirically observable fact.  

For physicists this acausality of the observation act, the collapse of the wave function or the quantum leap, is very annoying because it is not controllable by the conscious will. They looked therefore for a way out of this dilemma. They decided to do such a measurement or observation many millions of times. Like this they get a probability distribution that tells them what likelihood all the possible realized states will have. With the help of this trick it was possible to get power over the acausal quantum leap. Therefore quantum physics was able to become the mathematical theory behind modern technological means like the atomic bomb, the nuclear power plant, the computer, the laser, and so on.  

Wolfgang Pauli was a master in formulating such complex facts in extremely condensed statements. In an article he published in the year 1950, he describes therefore the so-called observation problem of quantum physics as follows:  

„In der Mikrophysik [RFR: Quantenphysik] ist ... jede Beobachtung ein Eingriff von unbestimmbarem Umfang ... und unterbricht den kausalen Zusammenhang der ihr vorausgehenden mit den ihr nachfolgenden Erscheinungen. Die unkontrollierbare Wechselwirkung zwischen Beobachter und beobachtetem System bei jeder Messung macht daher die in der klassischen Physik vorausgesetzte deterministische Auffassung der Phänomene undurchführbar. Auch unter wohl definierten physikalischen Bedingungen lassen sich über die Resultate künftiger Beobachtungen im allgemeinen nur statistische Voraussagen machen, während das Resultat der Einzelbeobachtung nicht durch Gesetze bestimmt ist. In diesem Sinne könnte man sagen, dass dem modernen Physiker das Irrationale als auswählende Beobachtung entgegentritt. Das nach vorherbestimmten Regeln ablaufende Spiel wird durch diese unterbrochen und eine Wandlung mit nicht vorhersagbarem Resultat hervorgerufen, die somit als wesentlich nicht automatisches Geschehen aufgefasst wird.“ [emphasis mine]

English translation:  

“In microphysics [quantum physics; RFR] … every observation is an interference of indeterminable extent … and interrupts the causal connection between phenomena preceding and subsequent to it. The indeterminable interaction between observer and observed system in every measurement thus makes it impossible to carry through the deterministic conception of phenomena postulated in classical physics. Even under well-defined physical conditions it is in general possible to make only statistical predictions of the results of future observations, while the result of the single observation is not determined by any laws. In this sense we may say that irrationality presents itself to the modern physicist in the shape of selecting (auswählende) observation. The course of events, taking place according to predetermined rules, is interrupted by this observation, and a transformation (Wandlung) is evoked with an unpredictable result, a modification which is therefore conceived of as happening in an essentially non-automatic manner.” [emphasis mine]

 

5.2.2.2 The ending of the Neoplatonic infertility in the collapse of the wave function

As we have seen, Carl Jung was convinced that the transformation of the nonascertainable into the ascertainable happens – with the help of the Anima - as an act of conscious cognition. For an empirically oriented scientist educated in quantum physical epistemology, however, the transformation process of the nonascertainable, more exactly, of the potential being, into the ascertainable or actual being means something very different. The wave function, which is a causal mathematical law (the Schroedinger equation), collapses by the act of conscious observation and like this potential being is incarnated into our spacetime bound world as actual being. Therefore the crucial aspect of this act of creation is not cognition, but observation. Further, because in a single observation act no one knows which potential being of the wave function will become actual, the transformation process of potential being into actual being, the collapse of the wave function of quantum physics caused by the observation or measurement, is an acausal or indeterministic act of creation.  

Already in the year 1950 Pauli tried to show to Jung the revolutionary new aspect of this fact. He wrote to him in letter [45P]:  

“In [quantum] physics, the essential aspect of uniqueness (for which there has never been a place in the physical laws of nature) has manifested itself in an unexpected place. This place is the observation itself, which is unique (or is an act of creation, if you will) because it is impossible to eliminate the influence of the observer by means of determinable corrections.” [emphasis mine]

This crucial insight, already developed in the twenties of the last century, contradicts Jung’s hypothesis of the archetypes as eternal spiritual-psychic ideas and therefore also as Platonic being projected into heaven Pauli criticizes later (February 1953) – as we have seen in section 3.3.7 - in the letter “To be or not to be”.  

In a letter written eight days before to Markus Fierz, Pauli expresses the concerning argument as follows:  

„Es ist diese Irrationalität der Beobachtung, welche die Psi-Funktion [Schrödinger-Gleichung; RFR] verhindert, ‚platonisch’ – d.h. in einem ‚metaphysischen Raum’ – zu bleiben.“

English translation:  

“It is this irrationality of the observation that prohibits the Psi function [Schroedinger equation; RFR] to remain ‘platonic’ – i.e., in a ‘metaphysical space’”. [translation mine]

This statement helps us to better understand what Pauli’s implications in the Hornberger Schiessen story (see section 4.2.2) mean: “Everyone goes home and says; ‚Nothing happened’.” With this joke Pauli cirumscribed the fact that in Neoplatonic alchemy nothing new was created and therefore it remained infertile. In analogy to this statement we can say that in Newton’s physics “nothing happens”, because the causal law is not interrupted by a quantum leap, and therefore no creation act happened.  

After the clarification of the quantum leap’s epistemological background, we can therefore see that classical natural science (Newtonian physics) has adopted the Platonic axiom of the Idea’s eternal immutability. During the 17th century, with Galilei, Kepler and Newton the hypothesis of the eternally unchangeable mathematical laws that rule the world and the universe entered the consciousness of mankind and the acausal or magical miracle was more and more repressed. Since then we believe in the prejudice that the world changes, in fact, but that the development of this change we can describe by causal mathematical laws, the modern Platonic Ideas, which remain the same for all eternity.  

We understand further, why Wolfgang Pauli called Einstein’s attitude a Hornberger Schiessen. He – and after him also David Bohm - did not accept that the world of quantum physics is in principle acausal and so they persisted in looking for causal “hidden variables” behind the acausality of quantum physics. However, the truth is that God – or better the Goddess, the World Soul (anima mundi) - plays dice with the universe. The “Nothing happens” of Neoplatonic alchemy is not true anymore, because in the quantum physical act of observation the causal potential being of the wave function (Schroedinger equation) collapses, and the eternal immutability of the universal law, the Neoplatonic infertility, is interrupted by the quantum leap. Or as Pauli expresses it: The observation prohibits the wave function from remaining platonic. With the quantum leap a new development begins. We cannot however anticipate which one of the many potentialities described by the wave function is realized. Therefore this acausal, indeterministic act is a new creation or incarnation that overcomes the infertility of the Platonic law.  

The revolutionary insight of quantum physics deeply contrasting to the central axiom behind natural science, thus consists in the idea that with the collapse of the wave function – the latter representing the eternal causal law of Platonises – the world of the causal mathematical law collapses as well. The observation by a human being is accompanied by an irrational act in nature, in which the “eternal law” is interrupted acausally or indeterministically. In the moment of the quantum leap, for a short moment the mathematical laws of science are not valid anymore. A new state of the world, i.e., a new creation or incarnation is reached which one cannot at all forecast.

 

5.2.2.3 Carl Jung’s conflict between a causal and an acausal theory of the psyche  

Carl Jung was educated in a world before the quantum physical revolution. Therefore, his theory of the archetypes evolved in a time in which quantum physical epistemology was not yet developed. His thinking is therefore based on the Platonic Idea of the eternal law that never changes. In other words: It follows the assumptions of classical science. Implicitly he presumes that there exists some sort of a causal law, after which the archetypes develop in the course of time.  

The depth psychologist is therefore looking for such eternal laws ruling the behavior of the archetypes. Especially in his book Aion (June, 1950) he tries to prove the idea of a causal development of the God-image, of the so-called Self. In the Introduction to this text he writes [CW 9/II, p. ix]:  

“My investigation seeks, with the help of Christian, Gnostic, and alchemical symbols of the self, to throw light on the change of psychic situation within the ‘Christian aeon.’”

Sixteen months later, in October 1951, Wolfgang Pauli criticizes this idea of an obviously causal change in the world of Jung’s central archetype, the Self, in a letter to Markus Fierz:  

“Viele Aussagen … über das Unbewusste [sind] noch viel zu sehr im Sinne der oben ‘klassizistisch’ genannten ‘Idee der objektiven Realität im Kosmos’ gehalten. Das scheint mir insbesondere dann der Fall, wenn von C.G. Jung versucht wird, gesetzmässige Aussagen über die zeitliche Abfolge der ‘Archetypen’ zu finden (er nennt das die ‘Dynamik des Selbst’).”

English translation:  

“Many statements … about the unconscious [are] yet much too much formulated in the sense of the idea, above called ‘classicistic’, of the ‘objective reality in the cosmos’. This seems especially the case for me, when C.G. Jung tries to find statements about the laws of the chronological development of the ‘archetypes’ (he calls this the ‘dynamics of the Self’).” [translation mine]

It is obvious that Pauli refers here to Chapter XIV, Die Struktur und Dynamik des Selbst (The Structure and Dynamics of the Self) of Jung’s book Aion. As we can see in other letters, with the “classicistic idea” Pauli means Einstein’s attempt of finding a causal theory behind the acausality of quantum physics. Therefore he criticizes the depth psychologist’s attempt as a relapse into the epistemological preconditions of Newton ’s and Einstein’s classical causal theory.  

Of course such an undertaking remains in crucial contrast to the quantum physical epistemological insight of the acausal interruption of the continuous and causal mathematical law by the discontinuous quantum leap in the moment of the observation that Pauli calls an act of creation.  

On the other hand, Jung’s synchronicity theory is based on exactly such an acausal principle. After him, synchronicity is a creation act in time (CW 8, § 965) following the nexus of the creatio continua (CW 8, § 967). Therefore, during developing his thoughts, the depth psychologist has created two contradictory theories of the possible processes happening in the collective unconscious.  

It was also “master mind” Wolfgang Pauli who first saw this contradiction in Carl Jung’s theory. Already three years before the dispute with Jung about the term “psyche”, after a discussion with C.A. Meier in August, 1950, he writes in a footnote to a letter addressed to his companion that Jung cannot accept “die Tatsache der Existenz von zwei logisch einander widersprechender Theorien”, “the fact of the existence of two logically mutually exclusive theories” he created, a causal and an acausal one.  

This remark is of extraordinary importance, because Pauli expressed it in the context of a discussion about his World-clock vision of 1936. It is the first hint for the fact that the Nobel laureate supposed that this absolutely central vision of his life could have something to do with a coordination of causal and acausal processes.  

 

5.2.2.4 Wolfgang Pauli’s approach: Quantum physical observation as a creation act  

Whilst Jung, because of his pre-quantum physical worldview, got stuck in the contradiction between the deterministic and the indeterministic theories, Pauli tried to find a solution with the means of quantum physics.  

For him the transformation of the nonascertainable into the ascertainable does not happen during the cognitive act – what I call the creation by cognition – but as a consequence of the quantum leap. In this collapse of the wave function the metaphysical and therefore not ascertainable potential being transforms into ascertainable actual being. Such a process happens during the quantum physical observation and is “an act of creation” (W. Pauli). Therefore we can circumscribe this transformation of potential being into actual being as a creation by observation.  

It is a tragedy of his fate that Wolfgang Pauli did not find an ambiance with Carl Jung and his collaborators for the discussing of the exquisitely important epistemological questions presented above. Already almost two years before the letter to C.A. Meier, Wolfgang Pauli expressed his frustration about this impossibility in a letter to Markus Fierz of October, 1948. There he writes:  

“Die Psychologen scheiden leider aus wegen völlig ungenügender mathematisch-physikalischer Bildung.” 

English translation:  

“The psychologists separate unfortunately out because of their completely insufficient mathematical/physical education.” [translation mine]

Therefore, the problem of Carl Jung’s contradicting theories, the causal and the acausal one, and its connection with the enigma of Wolfgang Pauli’s World-clock vision remains unsolved up until our time, almost 70 years after its appearance in his soul.  

 

5.2.2.5 The Nobel laureate’s isolation since 1935 because of his dreams about Eros and radioactivity  

We can now perhaps imagine the resulting isolation and the associated loneliness of the Nobel laureate. Because of his occupation with Carl Jung’s depth psychology – forced by his neurosis appearing in 1931, shortly after his divorce from a dancer and the “invention” of the antineutrino that followed it immediately – he was now also “divorced” from his colleagues in theoretical physics.  

Concerning this difficulty he writes to Marie-Louise von Franz in a letter of July, 1954 in the context of a dream he had 3 days before about a secret radioactive laboratory in Sweden, we will deal with in section 5.4:  

[Der Traum vom geheimen Labor, in dem ein radioaktives Isotop isoliert wurde] “gehört zu denjenigen Träumen, die mich seit etwa 18 Jahren von meiner Umwelt geistig isolieren."

English translation:  

[The dream of the secret laboratory, in which a radioactive isotope was isolated] “…belongs to those dreams that have isolated me for 18 years, more or less, from my surroundings.” [translation mine]

Indeed, when we go back a little more than 18 years in Pauli’s life, we find a letter from June, 1935 to Jung, with which he sent also an enclosure of new dreams the depth psychologist did not yet possess and was therefore not able to include in his essay about the Nobel laureate’s archetypal dreams he published in the year 1936 as Traumsymbole des Individuationsprozesses (GW 8, §§ 44; Individual Dream Symbolism in Relation to Alchemy, CW 8, §§ 44)[i].  

In this letter, Pauli writes that these dreams and fantasies contain on the one hand “close links with … parapsychological areas that are not easily accessible.” Then he continues:  

“The fantasies often assumed their own peculiar character by using physical terminology very familiar to me (such as ‘isotope separation,’ ‘fine structure,’ …, ‘resonant bodies,’ ‘radioactive nucleus,’ etc.), to express analogies with psychic facts that I can only vaguely surmise.” 

In a further letter of February, 1936 the physicist comes back to this collection of dreams,  

“… in which the dark anima asserts with a certain persistence that there is a ‘magical’ connection between sexuality and eroticism on the one hand, and political or historical events on the other. This is the aspect of the anima frequently represented in dreams as ‘Chinese’.”

And in a letter three and a half months later he stresses that the dreams linking Eros with political events go on, what is “extremely surprising and unexpected for me.”  

We will deal later with this strange connection between Eros and radioactivity on the one hand and Eros and history on the other, obstinately emphasized by the preconscious knowledge of the Self (see section 5.4). Here I will only demonstrate how Pauli’s dreams isolated him from his colleagues in physics, because they enlarged the meaning of such terms as radioactivity with the help of a “physical-symbolic language” (W. Pauli) in a very astonishing manner.  

We can now imagine, why the Nobel laureate, when talking about a recent dream of a radioactive laboratory in the letter of 1954 to Marie-Louise von Franz, in which radioactive isotopes have been isolated without his knowledge, comes back to these very strange dreams of the early 1930’s. And it is even more remarkable that Marie-Louise von Franz also dreamt a dream during this time, in which she was asked, as we have seen (section 5.1), to find the “psychological equivalent to the atomic bomb.”  

 

5.2.2.6 Summary and prospects  

In the quantum physical observation act the wave function describing causal but only potential events collapses. The potential being becomes actual being. We do not however know which one of the many potential events will become real. Therefore the quantum physical measuring or observation act, the transformation of potential being into actual being, the empirical realization of the metaphysical state, is acausal, indeterministic and discontinuous.  

Because such an observation “creates” a result that is not causal and therefore not predictable anymore, Wolfgang Pauli calls it an act of creation. In contrast to Carl Jung’s creation by cognition, the collapse of the wave function is therefore an act of creation by observation.  

The mathematical law is the scientific expression of the Neoplatonic assumption of the Platonic Idea’s eternal immutability: The world changes by motion, the law, however, describing this motion, stays the same in all eternity. Therefore, the collapse of the wave function means also the end of the Neoplatonic immutability, i.e., the demise of its infertility. The creation by observation could therefore be the beginning of a new fertility. It is this idea I will develop further below, and we will see that the archetype behind it is the so-called coniunctio of Hermetic alchemy.  

Already Wolfgang Pauli has seen – significantly in the context with his World-clock vision - that with the synchronicity hypothesis Carl Jung has created two contradicting depth psychological theories, a causal and an acausal one. This is an epistemological deficiency which is desperate to be eliminated in the near future. Could it be that such a solution consists in the idea of combining the two theories, and by this following the Hermetic coniunctio archetype?  

In the early 1930’s, the Nobel laureate began to have strange dreams showing him that certain physical terms have also a deeper meaning he called first “physical-symbolic”. With such a statement, not at all understandable for a natural scientist, they isolated him more and more from his colleagues in physics. On the other hand, he was neither able to discuss the concerning problems with Jung and his collaborators because of their insufficient mathematical/physical education. For the second half of his life, Wolfgang Pauli suffered therefore a deep isolation and loneliness.  

One of the most important contents of these dreams was a “radioactive core” he had to isolate. The preconscious knowledge of the collective unconscious tried to show him further, that this “radioactive core” should replace Carl Jung’s depth psychological term Self. It even told him that the symbolic extension of the meaning of this core’s radioactive decay should also take the place of the term synchronicity as used by Jung.  

These dreams began with a series of 1935, not yet published. Therefore we can only speculate that they wanted to convince the Nobel laureate that this physical-symbolic meaning of radioactivity is in some yet unknown way connected with the problem of Eros, and that this “Eros-radioactivity” seems to have an influence on the future course of the world.  

Therefore the question arises; “Is the above solution to the problem of Jung’s two contradictory theories, a solution that is based on the background of the Hermetic coniunctio archetype, related to the deeper meaning of the term radioactivity?” We will see that this is, in fact, the case: It is possible to describe empirically observable psychophysical events, in which the deterministic course of the world is – analogous to a single radioactive decay in quantum physics or to the so-called collapse of the wave function - spontaneously interrupted by an indeterministic event, after which the world goes on again in a deterministic manner, but on a different level not predictable in principle. 

   

Proofread by GJS, May 2004



[i] As we can see in § 45, Jung dealt with 400 dreams Pauli dreamt during the first 10 months of his analysis with a student of the depth psychologist (Erna Rosenbaum). The analysis began in February 1932 [Meier, 2001, p. 10]. Therefore, Jung’s dream material contains at best the dreams of the year 1932.

 


Chapter 5, part 4a

 


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20.5.2004