Description

Writing as method: Depth psychological research and archetypal voice

ELIZABETH NELSON PHD

Director of the Dissertation Office; Research Coordinator, Depth Psychotherapy Program, Pacifica Graduate Institute, Santa Barbara, CA, United States of America

Abstract

A depth psychological approach to research offers a new way to understand issues of voice, reflexivity, collaboration, presentation, and representation in writing up qualitative and mixed methods studies. It expands the notion of participants in the research to include the activated archetypal images who are present and speaking and with whom, we might say, the research is being conducted. This unusual approach to research pivots around a statement by Jung, in which he says that creative work ‘consists in the unconscious activation of an archetypal image and in elaborating and shaping this image into the finished work …. The archetype … summons up a voice stronger than our own’ (Jung, 1966, p. 82). What is this voice and when does it appear? How can a person attuned to psyche discover, recognize, welcome, and ultimately write with this voice? The author suggests that the researcher’s voice and the activated archetypal image work in tandem, each engendering the other. What emerges as the finished work is a collaboration of psyche and scholar that molds the text in deep and sometimes unnamable ways and speaks to readers of the deep, unfathomable psyche.

Keywords: research method, writing, voice, Jung, archetype, psyche, archetypal voice, image, creative process