Reviewed by Michael Daw
The thrust of this book is that psi might usefully be reenvisaged as synchronicity rather than its traditional framing as a form of information transfer such as with telepathy or precognition or energy transfer such as with psychokinesis. Any actual transfer of information or energy associated with psi is now thought to be unlikely by those parapsychologists – arguably the majority – who prefer some model of non-local consciousness. However, Lance Storm argues that the use of the descriptors telepathy, remote viewing, energy healing and the like mean that the old information transfer paradigm, whilst usually implicit, is nevertheless virtually ubiquitous in the field. This, he suggests, is in danger of stunting progress because of the ambiguity of terms and inadequacy of the framework to the task at hand. Instead, he maintains that psi as a whole might instead be more productively viewed through the lens of synchronicity. He maintains that this shift may reinvigorate research by removing the straightjacketed thinking of what has become parapsychological orthodoxy.
The first two out of the book’s five (long) chapters constitute an extended definition of synchronicity and unpack in some detail many of its various related concepts. This includes examples of synchronicities such as the seminal experience described by the concept’s originator Carl Jung who, whilst engaged with one of his clients relating her dream of a golden scarab piece of jewellery, noticed a gold-green species of beetle resembling such a scarab knocking on the window pane. Also helpfully included are counterexamples of non-synchronicities. Whilst often remarkable, these consist of coincidences that are not meaningful and contain no archetypal elements and therefore, Storm explains, are better described as ‘meaningless chance groupings’. One example is of a man who gets a pipe from his wife for his birthday, takes a walk in the woods, gets into conversation with another man who, it turns out, has also just received a pipe for his birthday, which is also today, and amazingly happens also to have the same first name.
These opening chapters also include discussions of Jung’s sometimes contradictory formulations of synchronicity; definitions of key terms in synchronicity such as archetypes, meaningfulness and acausality; various proposed categories of synchronicity; a critique of other authors’ understandings of synchronicity; and a seemingly comprehensive dispatching of alternative explanations that are sometimes proposed by sceptics to ‘explain away’ instances of synchronicity, for example by invoking chance, the ‘law of truly large numbers’, or suggesting that people are simply experiencing false memories or misattributing mundane experiences.
In the third, middle chapter, Storm makes the case for foregrounding what he suggests is the key role of the imagination in synchronicity (and therefore in psi), something he suggests that Jung was reluctant to do, perhaps because he perceived that this might have undermined his attempts to attain credibility for his theories.
These first three chapters are an extensive and in-depth examination of the nature of synchronicity and help Storm to lay out the foundations for his main argument. Maybe it’s just me, but I found these 150 pages or so (out of a total of 280) pretty tough-going and so I could only read a few pages at a time. If I hadn’t been reviewing the book, I’d probably have skimmed or skipped most of this material.
The fourth chapter is where the book becomes much more accessible to the general reader. This comprises a detailed description of remarkable occurrences (i.e., synchronicities) that were experienced by Bishop James Pike – an author, public figure and associate of Martin Luther King – after Pike’s troubled son shot himself in a hotel room. These synchronicities include what might be considered multiple instances of apparent after-death communication from his son, ESP and psychokinesis. Storm uses this extended example to unpack the nature of synchronicity and to make the case for considering the whole episode as synchronistic rather than taking a more reductionist approach.
The fifth and final chapter represents the culmination of Storm’s argument. He outlines the case for why it may be productive for researchers to view all parapsychological events through the lens of synchronicity. By way of example, he explains why he believes remote viewing, electronic voice phenomena (EVP), and Nostradamus are all ultimately synchronistic in nature. He argues that by viewing these as, respectively, ESP, survival phenomena and precognition, and without reference to the key aspects of synchronicity – meaningfulness and archetypal – we are missing important context and linkages between them that unnecessarily hamper scientific investigation.
This book is a call to arms – a plea for parapsychology to reexamine its foundations with the suggestion that, without such a reframing, progress in the field will continue to be incremental and will be unlikely to lead to the paradigm shift in mainstream science that so many parapsychologists want. This ambitious aim is perhaps one reason for its inclusion among the 2025 winners of the Parapsychological Association’s book awards.
However, despite the publisher’s contention that it is “written in an easy-to-understand style”, I would suggest that this book’s exhaustive treatment of the topic is often highly technical and so is not for the faint-hearted. Whilst this makes for excellent academic rigour, to my mind this – and the book’s high price point (around £35) – may limit the potential for the book to make the desired impact. This would be a shame because Storm’s proposal deserves focused attention from the parapsychological community. As Chris Roe and I argued in our Institute of Noetic Sciences prize-winning essay (and indeed as Michael Nahm did in his), parapsychology stands to benefit from a reconsideration of its purpose towards an increased focus on the quest to understand the nature of consciousness. And Storm’s approach to synchronicity and psi is an important contribution to this endeavour.
PS
This book has a companion volume – A New Approach to Psi, which was reviewed for the SPR by Nemo Mörck. Despite their very different table of contents, I am struck by the similarity of Nemo’s and my reviews. If both books are intended to make the same argument but from different perspectives, I for one would have preferred a single volume – one that might appeal to a more general readership without sacrificing academic rigour.