"[7] As early as 1928, Freud's contemporary, Carl Jung, introduced the concept of synchronicity, a theory of "meaningful coincidences".
[8] In 1946, Otto Fenichel concluded that "the projection of the superego is most clearly seen in ideas of reference and of being influenced....Delusions of this kind merely bring to the patient from the outside what his self-observing and self-critical conscience actually tells him.
"[9] Jacques Lacan similarly saw ideas of reference as linked to "the unbalancing of the relation to the capital Other and the radical anomaly that it involves, qualified, improperly, but not without some approximation to the truth, in old clinical medicine, as partial delusion"[10]—the "big other, that is, the other of language, the Names-of-the-Father, signifiers or words",[11] in short, the realm of the superego.
"[14] Laing also considered how "in typical paranoid ideas of reference, the person feels that the murmurings and mutterings he hears as he walks past a street crowd are about him.
[17] From the psychoanalytic view, there may be at the same time "transitions...to delusions" from ideas of reference: "abortive ideas of reference, in the beginning of their development or, in schizotypal personalities, continuously, may remain subject to the patient's criticism...under adverse circumstances, by minimal economic shifts, however, reality testing may be lost and daydreams of this kind turn into delusions.