Getting Lost In Jung - Why Do We Tend to Reject What We Do Not Understand? Part 2

 

Why do we tend to reject what we do not understand? Here is a psychological question about how human beings deal with uncertainty, and Jung gives us an unusually provocative case through which to examine it

In Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle, Jung argues that we tend to reject experiences that we cannot understand. What we cannot explain can easily become what we refuse to acknowledge. Perhaps this is why we are often more comfortable with what can be measured than with what can only be experienced. Measurement gives us a sense of control. It allows us to classify, compare, reproduce, and communicate what we observe. But not everything meaningful in human experience can be captured so easily. Jung describes synchronicity as an acausal event that is not reproducible yet somehow connected to reality. Since we cannot understand synchronicity, we tend to ignore it when it happens. The same applies to dreams. Dreams can be chaotic, and since they are not easy to convert into a comprehensive narrative that could be useful, we also tend to ignore them.

Thus, it can be very stressful to see a math equation in front of you without having a clue how to solve it. Maths and computer code can be complicated, but for those who are interested, there is a method. There are rules to follow, and with enough knowledge and practice, what initially seems confusing can become understandable.

The real challenge, however, is coping with natural phenomena that cannot always be easily explained, predicted, or quantified, even under controlled conditions. For instance, matter exists in four commonly recognised states: solid, liquid, gas, and plasma. The first three are relatively familiar and well described in everyday experience, while plasma, although scientifically understood, behaves in ways that are much harder to observe, model, and predict because of its complex interactions between charged particles and electromagnetic fields.

Plasma - Photo by Lavi Perchik on Unsplash

 

The difficulty becomes even greater when we encounter phenomena that do not fit precisely into the frameworks we already know. When something cannot be measured, reproduced, or explained using the tools available to us, we may experience uncertainty, and uncertainty can be uncomfortable. Instead of remaining curious, we may be tempted to dismiss the phenomenon simply because we do not have a way to understand it.

The unknown therefore presents us with a choice. We can reject what we do not understand, or we can become curious about it. The second option does not require us to believe that every unexplained phenomenon is real or meaningful. It simply asks us to resist the urge to dismiss something before we have understood what it might be revealing.

During Freud’s investigation into the functioning of the human psyche, the neuroscience technology that could support his hypothesis simply did not exist. Although Freud wanted to investigate using a measurable biological perspective, today, a century later, neuroscience offers new dialogues with psychoanalysis. Modern neuroscience has provided evidence that talk therapy can be associated with changes in neural activity involving regions implicated in emotion regulation, including prefrontal and limbic networks.  In his method of free association, the patient would talk about anything that came into their mind without filtering any ideas. This chaotic exercise could seem like nonsense at first, but over time it could reveal unconscious, repressed material that helped the individual understand the cause of their distress.

This method was also widely used with dreams. The patient would tell their dream, and through free association, they would move away from the dream narrative and end up revealing a complex or neurosis. Today, neuroscience studies indicate that during REM (rapid eye movement) sleep, the brain shows intense electrical activity involving emotional processing, memory integration, and brain plasticity. Likewise, in neuroscience, Freud believed dreams served a function (even though without fully understand the biological aspect), but the dream narrative itself was not the focus.

For Jung, dreams exist to regulate the psyche and can be understood as an advisor through symbolic stories for a more balanced personality. Throughout his anthropological studies, Jung observed that this resistance to the unknown does not only operate in modern civilisation. Jung observed similar attitudes in communities he studied in East Africa. In an indigenous community, Jung discovered that the dreams were only relevant when the dreamer was the chief of the community. Community members wouldn’t take their own dreams seriously, dismissing them as nonsense. So, the discomfort with the unfamiliar is present across all cultures.

I think one of Jung's most valuable qualities was his willingness to stay with observations that didn't fit comfortably within his existing theoretical framework. This is how he built his theories around the psyche, allowing the symbolic experience to settle until he found some interesting findings, especially in ancient texts. For instance, here is an example of a case study where Jung tells a story from early in his career, when he was not familiar with any studies involving mythology or archaeology.

He was working with a patient, a man with schizophrenia who'd been hospitalised for years, someone with no education or interest in mythology.  One day Jung found him at the window, staring at the sun and moving his head side to side. The patient insisted that Jung look too, saying there was something remarkable to see. When Jung asked what that was about, the man explained that the sun had a kind of tube attached to it, and as he moved his head side to side, the image would move too; by doing the movement, he was generating the wind. Do you think that Jung would take that for granted? He took notes and described it as an isolated delusion.

Then, about 4 years later, Jung was deep into his mythological research and came across a book in the National Library in Paris, in which the author analysed an ancient Greek papyrus, whose text was believed to be a Mithraic ritual, from the Alexandrian mystical tradition.

In this text, almost word for word, was the same image his patient had described: a kind of tube hanging down from the disc of the sun, which was described as the origin of the wind. Jung was astonished because there was no way this patient could have read that text, given he was hospitalised for years, had no academic background, and no access to obscure Greek texts sitting in a Parisian library archive.

So, the real question Jung was asking is: is this just a bizarre coincidence between one hospitalised patient and one ancient text? That question pushed him to develop the concept of archetypes and the collective unconscious.

This case study is a good example of keeping the enquiry open without prejudices or anticipations. Jung did not conclude immediately that the phenomenon proved the collective unconscious. Rather, he treated the correspondence as something requiring explanation. His eventual interpretation was that both images expressed an archetypal pattern originating independently of the individual's conscious experience. If Jung had simply ignored the patient’s experience, he would never have opened the enquiry to potentially unique ideas.

My sincere thought about dealing with the unknown is that it means sitting in therapeutic space. Without the urge to fix or make sense immediately. Freud did not need modern neuroscience to notice psychological phenomena that neuroscience would only later investigate.

The absence of an explanation does not necessarily make an experience meaningless. The challenge is to remain curious without prematurely converting uncertainty into either dismissal or belief. When we don’t immediately understand something, just stay calm and be patient; maybe you will find the answer years later, or never. And that’s ok, but the unknown can still offer a valuable, rich, interesting experience. It can come in the form of dreams, synchronicity and many other life mysteries.