Sense of coherence: How we develop our sense of connectedness

“Are you seeking the highest, the greatest? The plant can teach you:
Be willingly what it is without will—that is it!” (Schiller)

The “Mandelbrot set” is a set of complex numbers named after the mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot. “Complex numbers” are the product of “real” and “imaginary” factors. We can visualize “real” numbers; they correspond to our everyday experience of countable things. “Imaginary” numbers, on the other hand, are initially counterintuitive: The square of the imaginary number “i” is -1.

Carl Gustav Jung assumed that modern human beings possess two types of consciousness: “directed thinking” and “fantasy” (see: “The Red Book – Liber Novus,” C.G. Jung, 2009). Directed thinking is logical, linguistic, and relatively young in the history of humanity. Fantasy, by contrast, is pictorial, mythological, and—historically speaking—much older. Among other things, Jung’s life’s work consisted of systematically uncovering and tapping into the unconscious yet all the more powerful layer of mythic image-consciousness in human beings—and thus their hidden sources of strength.

Jung distinguished between “No. 1” and “No. 2” within himself throughout his life. Jung observed two “subpersonalities” in himself, which stood in a dynamic, rarely simple relationship to one another throughout his life. “No. 1” was the socialized person of everyday life, who “was simply the way he was” and with whom one “had to come to terms somehow.” “No. 2,” by contrast, “lived in the world of God.” “No. 2” was deeply religious and tended toward solitude. “No. 2” had “something heavy” about him and was connected with “bygone centuries—above all, with the Middle Ages.”

Jung viewed life as a process of “individuation,” that is, the gradual liberation from external determination. This “path to the Self” was at the same time humanity’s primordial myth. No wonder Jung was an enthusiastic reader of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, who reminded him strongly of “No. 2.” For Jung, the process of “alchemy”—the transformation of lead into gold—was a psychological process, an always heroic and individual path out of the comfort zone of the familiar and into the depths of the possibilities of the limitless human mind.

The “IceCube” neutrino detector at the South Pole is intended to help detect so-called “dark matter” and understand the nature of the universe. The discovery of “neutrinos” goes back to the German physicist Wolfgang Pauli. Jung and Pauli shared a lifelong friendship, which ultimately led Jung to the concept of “synchronicity”: an objectively purely random event accompanied by a subjectively experienced deep feeling of meaning, connection, and purpose.

In a complex system, all agents are instantaneously connected to one another. The phenomenon of synchronicity is the psychological analogue of the physical phenomenon of entanglement, the nonlocality of fields. While the perspective of causality makes the future appear to me as a “continuation” of the past, the perspective of synchronicity makes the past appear to me as an “outcome” of the future as it becomes present and creates meaning.

With causal reasoning, I can recognize how something became what it is today. With creative fantasy or “active imagination,” I can sense what it might be tomorrow. I no longer ask myself who caused a particular state. Instead, I ask myself what the current state might be good for: “What do I want now?”

Aaron Antonovsky, the founder of salutogenesis research, coined the term “Sense of Coherence” for this. It is the “sense of coherence” that leads me out of a victim mindset and into a self-effective, productive mode of shaping my life. We can train this sensory organ through gradual refinement, tinkering, “recursive iteration,” or presencing.

I describe why antifragility is initially a matter of attitude in How to Kill a Hydra? On Antifragility and Health. Optimism Can Be Learned shows that coherence is also a matter of explanatory style. You can find an introduction to the fundamentals in What Is Salutogenesis? Understanding Health According to Antonovsky, and more on practical application in Salutogenesis – The Ability to Become Healthy. You can find the complete overview in our comprehensive salutogenesis overview.