The Paradoxical Meeting of Depth Psychology and Physics

This course journeys through the remarkable union of quantum physics and Jung’s psychology. It was Nobel physicist Wolfgang Pauli who, in extensive discussion with Jung, sought to unify these two extreme fields. The hope was a resolution to the neurotic split we all carry where our inner spiritual life is denied its expression in a rational scientific description of the outer world. The resolution for Pauli would come from a psycho-physically neutral description of reality. Such a neutral account would also answer the psyche-matter problem that kept alchemists occupied for centuries (the mind/body problem of today).

What was so unique about Pauli’s approach is its emphasis on dreams, and not just on ideas, to find a solution. Many of his most profound advances on the problem arose from dreams worked deeply with Jung (see the Jung/Pauli letters: Meier, 1992). That is, his seeking of a solution was supported and indeed led by the unconscious, just as it was for the alchemists.

As both a Jungian analyst and a physicist, I have followed this same approach examining the dreams of Pauli and myself, in which physics symbols unify the outer physical world with the inner world of spirit (Matthews, 2022).

This course will take you through an interpretation of the most important of these dreams and their implications for the healing of this split world-view from which we suffer. As clinicians, we are often confronted with the effects of this neurotic split in our patients, most poignantly in those with a science background who suffer with an unmet spiritual yearning. For those with a general interest in Jungian studies, this course will deepen your understandings in: mandalas, synchronicity, Jung’s reclaiming of the unus mundus and correspondence idea (that the cosmos above, mirrors life below) and Jung’s discussion of the UFO phenomena.