ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview of quantum mechanics and the controversies it produced about the role of consciousness. The chapter discusses the Pauli–Jung correspondence and their hope for a complementary relationship between quantum mechanics and depth psychology. To provide the background to this debate, using ordinary language rather than mathematical terminology, the chapter describes the quantum wave function, the measurement issue in quantum mechanics, the Copenhagen interpretation, and various alternative approaches to understanding quantum mechanics. The chapter discusses issues such as uncertainty and determinism, acausality, complementarity, the challenge to scientific realism that emerges from quantum mechanics, and the debate about whether reality is created by the observer. The chapter discusses some of the other philosophical issues raised by quantum mechanics that were important to Jung, related to his work on synchronicity, and the analogies that have been suggested between psychotherapy and quantum mechanics. The chapter discusses the ways in which quantum mechanical ideas have been used or misused to support New Age philosophy, connections to mysticism, and proposed as a mechanism for psi phenomena.
