Journal of Analytical Psychology, 2016, 61, 5, 656–675

Cultural unconscious in research: integrating

multicultural and depth paradigms in
qualitative research

Oksana Yakushko, Pekti Miles, Indhushree Rajan, Biljana Bujko,

and Douglas Thomas, California, USA

Abstract: Culturally focused research has gained momentum in many disciplines,

including psychology. However, much of this research fails to pay attention to the
unconscious dynamics that underlie the study of culture and culturally influenced
human beings. Such dynamics may be especially significant when issues of
marginalization and oppression are present. Therefore, this paper seeks to contribute a
framework for understanding cultural dynamics, especially unconscious cultural
dynamics, within depth psychological qualitative research influenced by Jungian and
post-Jungian scholarship. Inquiry that is approached with a commitment to making
the unconscious conscious seeks to empower and liberate not only the subject/object
studied but also the researchers themselves. Following a brief review of
multiculturalism in the context of analytically informed psychology, this paper offers
several case examples that focus on researchers' integration of awareness of the
cultural unconscious in their study of cultural beings and topics.

Keywords: cultural unconscious, qualitative research, multiculturalism, cultural

complex

Introduction
Culturally-focused research has significantly expanded, along with critical
awareness of contextual factors on human experience (Schneider et al. 2001).
However, it is our contention that much of this research fails to attend to the
unconscious dynamics that are integral to the study of culture and cultural
beings, especially when issues of marginalization and oppression are present.
Analytical psychology has been criticized for its lack of attention to cultural
dynamics (Adams 1996; Altman 2010; Brewster 2013). Therefore, in this
contribution we hope to share a framework for understanding cultural
dynamics, especially the unconscious cultural dynamic within depth
psychological research, which includes concepts such as the cultural and
personal unconscious as well as the cultural complex. We believe that inquiry,

0021-8774/2016/6105/656 © 2016, The Society of Analytical Psychology

Published by Wiley Publishing, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
DOI: 10.1111/1468-5922.12257
Cultural unconscious in research 657

approached with commitment to making the unconscious conscious, can

empower and liberate not only the subject/object studied but also ourselves as
researchers. Thus, following a brief overview of the study of culture in depth
psychology, we will include several case examples on how we have integrated
awareness of the cultural unconscious into the study of cultural beings and
topics.

Culture, the unconscious, and the traditions of depth psychology

The concept of the implicit or unconscious influences on the everyday

functioning of people and groups is at the heart of a depth psychological
understanding of human experience (Samuels 1985). Jung asserted that
complementary to the individual unconscious, humanity shares the field of the
collective unconscious. He suggested that:

In addition to our immediate consciousness, which is of a thoroughly personal nature

and which we believe to be the only empirical psyche (even if we tack on the personal
unconscious as an appendix), there exists a second psychic system of a collective,
universal, and impersonal nature which is identical in all individuals. This collective
unconscious does not develop individually but is inherited. It consists of pre-existent
forms, the archetypes, which can only become conscious secondarily and which give
definite form to certain psychic contents.
(Jung 1959, para. 90)

Jung's (1969) own empirical research on the content of dreams and other
individual unconscious artifacts, as well as his study of various cultural
products (e.g. myths and rituals) pointed to the existence of this collective
unconscious field and its active presence in the psyches of people across
times and cultural divides. Contemporary Jungians and post-Jungian
humanistic scholars have further developed Jung's notions regarding pre-
existing forms as well as the archetypal significance of culture (Samuels
1985).
Conjoint with Jung's conceptualization of the collective unconscious, his
formulation of complex theory has also had a seminal influence on
subsequent generations. According to this theory, the personal unconscious of
the individual contains within it repressed dissociated elements that cluster
together in feeling-toned units or complexes (Jung 1969). Under certain
conditions, the complex is activated as a sort of psychological template or
‘image’ (Jung 1960) of thoughts, sensations and emotions, such that it
behaves autonomously and temporarily overtakes the conscious personality. It
was also Jung's contention that complexes play a crucial role in the structure
and content of dream material (Jung 1969).
Later in his career, Jung (1960) emphasized the tendency of the complex to
personify those aspects of our nature disowned by the conscious personality:
658 O. Yakushko, P. Miles, I. Rajan, B. Bujko, and D. Thomas

Complexes are objects of inner experience and are not to be met in the street and in
public places. It is on them that the weal and woe of personal life depends; they are
the lares and penates who await us at the fireside and whose peaceableness it is
dangerous to extol; they are the ‘little people’ whose pranks disturb our nights.
(Jung 1960, para. 209)

By acknowledging both their personifying tendencies and their structural

nature within the unconscious as primordial images, Jung postulated that
complexes contain an amalgam of personal traumatic experience and an
archetypal image.
The socio-cultural aspect of complex theory has developed in the thinking of
subsequent generations of Jungian scholars. Henderson (1984) refined Jung's
concept of the unconscious to theorize that most individuals’ inner world (i.e.
their individual conscious and unconscious experience) is grounded within the
larger context of culture, which profoundly shapes personal and group
identities and functioning. Henderson further proposed that such influence is
manifested through cultural attitudes. Similar to individual complexes, these
are affectively charged concepts and images that unconsciously shape people's
perceptions of themselves and others. Stein (1998) has noted that complexes
can manifest at multiple levels of the psyche within individuals, families,
communities and culturally identified groups. He is careful to make a
distinction between the social context of the cultural unconscious and the
broader archetypal nature of the collective unconscious. Singer and Kimbles
(2004a) synthesized Jung's ideas on how the psyche functions at the level of
groups and communities with his formulation of complex theory to coin the
term cultural complex. The authors were particularly interested early on in
‘understanding the psychology of group conflict’ (p. 2). Singer and Kimbles
postulated that cultural complexes arise from the cultural unconscious to form
what they call ‘the essential components of an inner sociology’ (p. 4). Similar to
the often erroneous or extreme attitudes of personal complexes, a cultural
complex can be prone to misinformation and bias at the cultural level of the
unconscious as it amalgamates generations of ancestral experiences and attitudes.
Singer and Kaplinsky (2010) further developed Henderson's (1984) ideas to
highlight that the cultural complexes exhibited in entrenched cultural
attitudes and behaviours, often rely on narrowly selected cultural memories to
frame understanding of cultural realities in order to re-affirm the carriers of
such beliefs and to relieve them of the need to challenge their simplistic
unambiguous perspectives on the world and others. Singer and Kimbles'
(2004b) edited volume provides examples of how cultural complexes drive
cultural perspectives and worldviews, including those related to politics,
racism, religion, and economic systems. Another example of an exploration of
the cultural complex can be found in a volume entitled Listening to Latin
America: Exploring Cultural Complexes in Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico,
Uruguay and Venezuela (Amezaga et al. [eds.] 2011).
Cultural unconscious in research 659

Alschuler (2007) also investigated the concept of the cultural complex,

relating it to the ideas initially proposed by Paolo Freire (1972) in the
Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Alschuler incorporates Friere's focus on
oppressed consciousness: the view that dominant or oppressive aspects of
culture and society dictate how social and individual realities are framed.
Specifically he highlights that the unconscious incorporation of oppressive
ideas and beliefs can occur not just among the dominant group but also
among those who are oppressed and marginalized (i.e. those who are
marginalized accept their position as normative). Similarly, O'Hara (1989)
highlighted that the client-centred approach of Carl Rogers is consistent with
Paolo Freire's (1972) liberation teachings. Lastly, feminist and post-colonial
perspectives on the way in which culture shapes individuals’ inner realities
also embrace principles similar to liberation and depth psychologies (see
Young 2001 for a review).
Depth psychological understanding of culture and society has also been
shaped by the recent emphasis on the significance of multicultural awareness
within psychological sciences. Borrowing from critical and Marxist theorists,
multicultural scholars emphasize the cultural underpinnings of all knowledge,
including personal knowledge (Duran & Duran 1995; Sue & Sue 1999;
Shulman & Watkins 2008). Comas-Diaz (2012) suggested that humanist and
multiculturalist forces have engaged in an evolutionary transformation of
psychology as a whole, leading it to embrace contextualism, holism, and
liberation.
However, depth psychological scholars have further challenged the notions of
culture and multiculturalism by highlighting that culture functions primarily on
the unconscious plane, thus influencing both the expressions and
interpretations of all personal and collective material (Adams 1996; Beebe
2004; Brewster 2013). For example, Samuels (1993, 2001), a Jungian scholar,
proposed that everything in both conscious and unconscious realms is cultural
and ‘political’ and, conversely, everything cultural and political carries
conscious and unconscious dynamics.
Similarly, coming from a psychoanalytic framework, Layton (2004, 2006)
highlighted that conscious and unconscious individual identities are developed
and maintained within a framework of culture. She further argued that
without a questioning awareness of culture as the bedrock for the
manifestations of what we call ‘self’, ‘us’, ‘identity’, individuals inevitably fall
into elevating the dominant cultural discourse to a normative position. In
addition, Tubert-Oklander (2006), writing from a Latin American psychoana-
lytic context, proposed that understanding the personal unconscious should
only constitute the initial step in understanding individual experience. Building
on the works of Marx, Freud, Jung, Lacan and Henderson, he suggested that it
is the cultural unconscious that often is far more deeply situated within
individuals’ psyches, and that to truly effect profound change it is that level of
the unconscious that must be examined and made conscious.
660 O. Yakushko, P. Miles, I. Rajan, B. Bujko, and D. Thomas

Within qualitative research traditions, limited attention has been given to

notions of the unconscious factors, although the human science traditions
emphasize the essential role of meaning in constructing an understanding of
human experience (Giorgi 2014). Holloway and Jefferson (2000), using
psychoanalytic epistemology, have provided one of the few contributions on
conducting qualitative research ‘differently’. They proposed that researchers
must attend to the ways that participant ‘data’ can reflect their position as
‘defended subjects’. Holloway and Jefferson noted that within the context of
culture, which emphasizes the maintenance of social deference and
conformity, participants are likely to make meaning of their experiences from
a position of unconscious anxiety. This anxiety is likely to arise specifically in
response to a researcher, who represents a position of authority and power
ascribed to academic status. They offered suggestions, such as the use of free
association, for researchers to examine their position in relation to
participants as well as ways to access unconscious material in research.
Frosch and Baraitser (2008) further addressed the potential for utilizing
psychoanalytic concepts in psychosocial research, including qualitative
research. Holloway (2008), in response to their proposal, highlighted the
complexity of applying clinically-based psychoanalytic concepts such as
countertransference to empirical scholarship processes that attend to matters
of subjectivity, context and power dynamics in ways that are different from
therapeutic situations. Nevertheless, these authors highlighted the importance
of acknowledging complex latent factors that are inherent in research with
human beings who often inhabit oppressive socio-cultural spaces.
Jungian approaches to research emphasize a different role of the unconscious.
Jungian scholars have stressed the importance of research reflexivity by
attending to unconscious factors that are related specifically to the researcher
herself or himself (Coppin & Nelson, 2005; Romanyshyn, 2007; Yakushko &
Nelson, 2013). These authors note that the topic as well as the research
process reflects the dynamic interplay of factors related to the cultural
unconscious (e.g. the needs of communities), personal unconscious (e.g. the
researcher's calling toward the topic, including through the researcher's
connection to ancestral voices or needs), and the interplay of these toward a
more holistic approach to research that acknowledges the living and
transformative nature of being part of an en-souled world. With such an
approach, synchronicities, complexes, active imagination, play, archetypes,
myths, dreams, symbols and images are considered central to the process of
research for the researcher.
Nevertheless, we have found that attention to the intersections of these
various approaches is limited. Specifically, although multicultural psychology
and culturally-focused scholarship is significant, and although mainstream
qualitative research has expanded attention to understanding human beings in
their context, scholarship that sets out intentionally to attend to unconscious
factors related to culture both for participants as well as for the researcher is
Cultural unconscious in research 661

rare. Moreover, the review of the cultural unconscious and cultural complexes
stems from literature that primarily deals with clinical as well as socio-
political realities in theory, rather than via qualitative research. Even more
rare are published works that integrate depth psychological, specifically
Jungian, traditions with qualitative research on topics addressing complex
cultural realities. It is our contention that greater awareness of processes
related to the cultural unconscious and cultural complexes through the
accounts of researchers who have actively sought to examine these dynamics,
can elucidate and deepen understanding of such humanistic scholarship.
Thus, in the following examples of our research, we hope to highlight how
we have approached understanding the cultural unconscious dynamics both
within ourselves and in our research processes.
These examples are derived from both U.S. and international contexts.
Specifically, they include dissertation studies about the Maat archetype in
working with African American adolescent men, about experiences of human
trafficking among girls in India, and about birth and death rituals and myth
narratives of female elders in Macedonia. Each of the research narratives is pre-
sented here in a first person account, maintaining the distinct voice and focus of
each researcher in order to maintain the integrity of self-expression related to
their own research processes.

Maat archetype and African American adolescent males (Pekti)

I began the dissertation process by actively attending to what I believe to be the
ancestral voices that shape my cultural unconscious. Early on in the process, I
had a dream about a mythical Afro-Brazilian guide. Covered from head to toe
in orange mud and wearing short orange muddy dreadlocks, he made an atyp-
ical appearance from the bush to lead me along steep and winding dirt roads. I
could not have guessed then that the analysis of this particular dream would be
a catalyst for the discovery of my research topic.
For many years I had studied African symbols, and over time their meaning
and the significance of these symbols became familiar companions within my
inner life. In graduate school, my studies in depth psychology provided me with
only the Western symbols and images. Although helpful in teaching me how to
relate to the world of cultural unconscious, my education was an aspect of
Western cultural colonization, which I had to continually explore and address
in my personal and professional life. Thus, my dream of an Afro-Brazilian guide
became a bridge for my search for and incorporation of the African-centered
myths and symbols as a foundation for my worldview.
Another aspect of my identity unconsciously shaped my scholarly interests.
As a mother of African American boys, I was continually moved to attend to
the needs of Black adolescent males in the U.S. within a cultural zeitgeist of
violence and oppression they experienced. Initially I planned a quantitative
662 O. Yakushko, P. Miles, I. Rajan, B. Bujko, and D. Thomas

approach for an inquiry into the effect of meditation on the academic achieve-
ment of adolescents in a stressful urban environment. I wanted to provide these
young men and those who work with them tools for dealing with cultural com-
plexes that so often narrowed and damaged their lives. However, I realized that
Asian forms of meditation popularized in the West could be replaced with a
meditative focus on the Maat, the African symbol of balance, inner authority,
and grace.
Thus, in reflecting on issues of representation, voice, cultural unconscious
and cultural complexes related to racism, I decided to pursue a qualitative
study. Five African American adolescent males from a South Central Los
Angeles charter high school participated in an eight-week meditation practice.
The practice required each to hold his attention on the feather of the Khemetic
archetype Maat. Maat is depicted as a woman who holds a scale with a heart on
one side and an ostrich feather on the other. The Maat Archetype is a container
for the codes of truth, justice, morals, ethics and cosmic balance.
At the completion of eight weeks, the young men engaged in unstructured
phenomenological interviews to explore their experiences. The study directly
focuses on the possibilities of an archetype's relationship to the individual
unconscious, and the ways culturally grounded symbology may impact the
adolescent psyche. I was deeply moved to discover in the stories of these
adolescent men that this symbology indeed deeply connected with them and
resonated in their search for a heart worthy of Maat's scale: light as a feather.
I conducted this research in my own community. Working from the African
principle Wherever we go there I am, I consider my community to be anywhere
that people of African descent reside. I was trusted and supported by my com-
munity throughout the data collection. It was accepted that what I was bringing
to them was good, not so much because they knew me personally but because
they knew me culturally. The community weighed my heart. Economically
deprived environments of African descent tend to display a hyper-vigilance or
knowing explained beautifully by one of my participants in the following
excerpt from an interview:

I am ‘bout to tell whoever I'm cool with, this ain't cool. The way people act, they vibe
could just feel the, I don't know what it is, I can just – it's just a sense.

I think people in depressed African American communities instinctively know if

you are an insider or an outsider. While collecting my data I was treated like
family and royalty by administrators, teachers, parents and everyone in-
between. On the contrary, in academia I felt the outsider, like a dark shadow
cast upon the light of an ivory tower. It was in academia where the merit of
cultural symbols, of African traditions and African American suffering, had to
be codified and rationalized.
Thus, the cultural complex I had to actively face was the mapping of reality,
whether psychological or methodological, through the unconscious images of
Cultural unconscious in research 663

White Europeans. This recognition of the cultural complex and its vestiges in all
aspects of an educational experience was for me the hardest aspect of my grad-
uate school training. Depth and humanistic psychology, with its focus on the
phenomenological and unconscious processes including cultural unconscious
and cultural complexes, held more possibilities for me than other types of edu-
cational environments. However, in my experience even within depth psychol-
ogy, the broader presence of non-White cultures and communities is often
minimized and rarely presented. The mythologies that pervaded my training,
including the philosophical traditions (e.g., Aristotle and Plato), were drawn
from White Western histories such as the Greek civilization.
I specifically related to the concept of unconscious colonization of individual
experience. I learned about the concept of the colonization of the Black psyche
in the work of the renowned psychiatrist Frantz Fanon (1952) who discussed
the racialization and colonization of the mind. I found that I began to address
the same imposition of dominant Western traditions on myself during the
research. I became consciously aware of the inner conflict. Brewster (2013)
has offered one of the other voices on approaches to understanding African
American experience through a Jungian lens. I was overtly conscious of my
personal ideas of Africa and struggled with how to represent them within my
research. However, I was also acutely aware of the European influences and
projections already embedded in my research methods.
In the aftermath, as I reflect on the imposition of a culture into my personal
and academic life, I recognize the need to figuratively bury myself in the
orange earth and have her absorb the vast amount of Greek and other White
Western images that have invaded me through my academic efforts. I have
actively sought to work through and pay attention to the feelings of cultural
incongruence as well as cultural complex, so that I could actively make space
for the voices and experiences of my young Black participants as well as give
voice to my interpretive perspective. The phenomenological analysis I
conducted suggested that the inclusion of a culturally significant archetype
aids competence in the African American adolescent male's quest for identity.
The participants discussed how in their lives of constant exposure to violence,
cultural projections and racism, the inclusion of meditative images (i.e. Maat)
and practices (i.e. meditation) provided them with a counter-balance to what
they experienced and feared. Their voices echoed a resounding interest in
connecting to roots which they recognized as their own (i.e. cultural archetypes)
as well as in recognizing that the broader culture stripped them of such
connections.
In conclusion, I believe that most doctoral dissertations are invited to expand
existing knowledge in the field. I felt this responsibility throughout my research
process not only because it was part of my training and not only because I
wanted to give voice to the marginalized voices in my community: I also felt a
responsibility to recognize the cultural complexes of racism and Western
domination of academia within myself, my training and my profession. I
664 O. Yakushko, P. Miles, I. Rajan, B. Bujko, and D. Thomas

hoped that the inclusion of the Maat archetype might affect the silence and
challenge these cultural complexes.

The next example presents a study on human trafficking in India, which

focuses on the experiences and voices of girls who are recovering from sexual
abduction and slavery. Similarly to the previous case, this example focuses on
an interactive dynamic between the researcher and her topic as well as her
participants, with a focus on the dynamics of cultural unconscious and
complexes embedded in such research.

Human trafficking in India (Indhushree)

Human trafficking is one of the most vile of human practices; often kept at the
peripheries of cultural awareness, human slavery is practiced in many countries
throughout the world, and every year millions of women and children are
bought, sold and traded into commercial sexual and labour-based slavery
(Yakushko 2009). Of these countries, India is one of the largest portals and
destination grounds for the trafficking and sexual enslavement of women and
children. Suffering in silence and shadow is the legacy of countless women
and children in India today.
As a U.S. born woman of East Indian descent and a clinician who had en-
countered trafficking in the U.S., I felt profoundly drawn toward engaging with
a phenomenological investigation of sex trafficking survivors in Kolkata, India
in order to gain an in-depth understanding of the women's lived experiences be-
fore and during trafficking, as well as their experiences post-rescue. Taking into
account socio-cultural, economic, gender and class-based factors, this study
evaluated the circumstances and conditions which led to the trafficking of these
women, their perceptions of themselves and their lives during their trafficking
experiences, and their impressions of themselves, their treatment and their
futures, post-rescue.
The study involved seven women between the ages of 16 and 22 who were
rescued from sex trafficking and had been involved in the rehabilitation
programme at SANLAAP, Sneha Shelter Home, for at least six months. To
facilitate the exploration of these survivors’ unique trafficking experiences, the
interviews were semi-structured and open-ended – I was hoping to hear and
make visible stories and personal narratives related to the horrors of
trafficking. The data was collected and analysed in the hope of gaining a
more comprehensive understanding of sex trafficking and post-rescue
treatment from the perspective of the survivors themselves.
I chose a phenomenological lens primarily because, in my view, existing
research often perpetuates survivor silence – it is primarily conducted to show
illness and violence related to trafficking but most of the time we hear not
from the women themselves but from those who work with them. I felt that
Cultural unconscious in research 665

within the context of depth psychological orientation, a phenomenological

methodology provides a space for hope, healing and perspective through the
authentic sharing of stories. For sex trafficking victims, psychological healing
and treatment can only begin in their shift from being objects to subjects –
from bodies of trade to souls re-vivified. In addition, the phenomenological
method challenges researchers to move towards the use of reflection,
identification and empathy to gain a more profound understanding of
participants’ experiences than mere units of data can accurately convey. I
found this to be especially important in carrying out this study because it was
from within the tension between research and relationship, between
observation and reflection, that the shift from data to story truly began. I
believed that the phenomenological method would honour the lived
experience of participants and in so doing would allow me to gain insights
into the contextual factors that impact the telling of these experiences.
Within this context, the major research themes arising from the interviews
that I felt were directly impacted by cultural prejudices and belief systems,
included participants’ fears about their future post-rescue and perceptions
that they had about how their communities would view them post-rescue.
Specifically, I witnessed how the girls expressed fear that they and their
families would be shunned, ostracized or even killed by their communities
once their identities as sex workers were revealed. I also became aware of
how the participants' views and emotions about themselves were significantly
impacted by aspects of the cultural unconscious: they had internalized
cultural messages about their worth and place within society; they carried the
weight of cultural projections regarding violence toward women and girls;
and they accepted responsibility for atrocities which was not theirs to accept.
Personal feelings of guilt and shame were present for all participants. I too
felt them directly and found myself holding them unconsciously within my
own psyche; the participants' feelings were mostly internalized, shame-filled
and held a sense of personal responsibility deriving from socio-cultural
judgement and rejection.
Often during the interviews I would begin to directly feel an intense
experience of projection and projective identification. I experienced myself as
being seen by these girls as a ‘good’ mother or a sister – a person who could
accept and hold them as no others could or would. I also continually
experienced intense reactions that were not consciously my own: I felt
intense feelings of fear, anger, sadness, shame, desire to be rescued,
helplessness and panic. Undoubtedly, I felt gripped by cultural complexes as
well – as a woman, as an Indian woman, as an Indian woman from the U.S.
The intensity of these projected emotions was especially evidenced in my own so-
matic responses. These reactions included headaches, occasional difficulty in
breathing, body aches, constriction of the throat and extreme drowsiness.
I also experienced another important dynamic of unconscious influence
during the research process at the socio-cultural level: I noted how the shelter
666 O. Yakushko, P. Miles, I. Rajan, B. Bujko, and D. Thomas

staff and surrounding village and community members spoke and interacted
with me throughout my stay in Kolkata. Those who knew that I was working
with sex trafficking survivors warned me that I was at risk of physical harm
and of becoming a social outcast if I were to divulge my reasons for being in
the village where the shelter was located. I was also made aware of rumours
that circulated about my own personal sexual practices, morals and values.
The cultural complexes were so pervasive and widespread that they did not
only frame the women and girls as objects of sexual exploitation but also
affected me as a researcher. Despite my privileged Western position and
education I was regarded as a person of supposedly dubious personal
character because of my interest in anything that had to do with ‘sex’,
especially ‘dirty sex’.
These experiences repeatedly forced me to examine how the research process
caused me to focus on understanding my own identity as an American born
woman of South Indian origin, especially the unconscious, complex-laden im-
pact on the research dynamics and related power differentials in the interview
space. In addition, I was challenged to balance the value of objectivity and data
collection for my research against the basic human imperative to nurture rela-
tionships with girls who had endured unimaginable abuse and violation.
Whereas these girls were forcibly relocated from being a subject to being an ob-
ject, I sought to continually access how my work as a researcher or even a
‘helper’ maintained their objectified position as well.
Finally, to say that this research changed me or moved me is to utterly
understate the truth. After I had completed the data collection and returned
from India I suffered a profound culture shock: I was wholly adrift after leaving
village culture in Kolkata, India and returning to my day-to-day life in
California. The first three months after my return were marked by an over-
whelming sense of displacement, listlessness and depression. It became essential
for me to unpack and process my unconscious feelings through therapy and dis-
cussions with colleagues who could assist me in contextualizing my research ex-
periences. This process also initiated within me an area of vulnerability which,
upon reflection, mirrored the translation of these girls from being objects to
being subjects. In effect, I felt I was transformed from being an observer and
collector of data to being a vessel entrusted with holding stories of the girls’ lives
– of their survival, death, birth, despair and hope. I believe that while we tend to
prepare ourselves for these experiences within therapeutic space (between our
clients and ourselves as therapists), by contrast any discussion of individual
and collective unconscious processes within research training and research
scholarship is remarkably sparse. In my experience making these unconscious
processes more conscious was not easy: for many months I remained blocked
in my dissertation writing because I feared that I would inadequately or inap-
propriately express the girls' stories. I learned that in order to be true to the
research process, I had to fully and truthfully occupy the personal internal pro-
cess that accompanied it. I believe that only in our vulnerability and through
Cultural unconscious in research 667

surrender to our own humanity can the fullness and subtlety of others’ stories
within a research context be heard and expressed.

Like the two examples that precede it, the study that follows was carried out
in the researcher's own cultural community. This inquiry focuses on an
engagement with female elders from small (i.e. rural) culturally-rooted
Macedonian communities around their perception of the role of birth and death
rituals in the collective experience of modern day Macedonians. The researcher,
a Macedonian immigrant to the U.S., focuses on how her own immigrant iden-
tity reflects and provides a framework for understanding the cultural complexes
that she encountered through her study.

Birth and death rituals in Macedonia (Biljana)

My interest in culture and psyche began much earlier than my research studies.
When I migrated to the U.S.A. from Macedonia in my mid-twenties, I was faced
with the task of mirroring two cultures within my development as a woman, a
mother and a professional. To integrate two cultures and become a third that
was my own was difficult, yet necessary. It was this concept of ‘the third’ that
provided a starting point for what I would experience as the confusing and dif-
ficult process of conducting research into the cultural complexities of the
Macedonians. My intention was to explore the cultural complexes embedded
in Macedonian experience through beliefs and ritualistic practices related to
birth and dying. When I felt ‘claimed’ or deeply called to this topic
(Romanyshyn 2007), I began to actively struggle with the tensions of my own
cultural complexes as an immigrant from Macedonia to the U.S.A.
As a Macedonian I approached data collection from the perspective of my
own understanding of supposed cultural complexes arising from histories of po-
litical oppression, economic tensions and cultural dynamics. I was eager not to
view my research as an attempt to window-dress an ancient culture and its old
myths or rituals as exclusively positive and valuable. In addition, I was aware
that among contemporary Macedonians an awareness of old practices is
disappearing, and was expecting elders to decry this disappearance and extol
the ‘good old times’. What I found was that the narratives offered by the partic-
ipants appeared to be far more human, alive with complexities, and layered in
regard to both positive and critical cultural perceptions.
However, the unconscious tensions became most prominent in my
recognition of the conflict between my training as a Western researcher or an
intellectual and my participants’ ‘primitive’ and unscholarly methods of
approaching their lives and stories. When I entered into relationship with this
tension, I realized that an unconscious part of me was ‘afraid’ to be
‘converted back’ to my native culture, away from the Western intellectual
traditions which I now claimed as my own. Indeed, cultural practices that
668 O. Yakushko, P. Miles, I. Rajan, B. Bujko, and D. Thomas

were embedded in my interviews (e.g. shared meals and gifts) also served to re-
awaken my Macedonian identity. It was mainly from these steps to make
unconscious processes more conscious, both internally and within the research
process, that I found within myself a new ability to be curious rather than judg-
ing, to be uncomfortable and confused rather than certain and self-directed.
Thus, I became aware that my personal reactions were rooted in cultural
complexes. For example, during one of the interviews I noted how critical I
felt of a woman-participant's seemingly boundless devotion to the memory of
her deceased husband. As a modern Western-identified female I found myself
judging the woman while also desiring to help her to ‘move on and enjoy
life’. This process of awareness indeed helped me to listen to the narrative
data I sought to collect about a cultural insistence that death not be ‘moved
on’ from but remain a vital part of day-to-day human experience. I also heard
anew how these narratives were situated within the cultural heritage specific
to Macedonia – a culture that insisted on holding on to long-lost heroes such
as its foremost champion Alexander the Great and to historically significant
events. Listening to the research participants’ views regarding their approaches
to death and grief, this cultural history, certainly with its cultural complexes, of-
fered me a glimpse of a deeper sense of human meaning, connection and
identity.
As mentioned earlier, I also had to work with another significant unconscious
pull within myself as a researcher seeking to ‘give voice’ to Macedonian culture:
I felt the appeal of approaching participants with the unquestioning tokenism
and uncritical adulation which are often found in Western writings about cul-
tures deemed ‘more primitive’. Paolo Friere (1972) discussed how colonization
results not only in perceiving the colonized as less than, but also by elevating
and venerating them, thus devaluing their humanity and complexity. I became
aware of fantasies that reaching out to participants in rural areas ‘less spoiled’
by technology or Western progress would result in more uncontaminated,
‘pure’ experience because I travelled to Macedonia to seek out elders in remote
villages and towns. I also imagined that these efforts would transform my own
and others’ views of Macedonia, which I perceived as ‘damaged by the West’.
The people I interviewed were indeed far more complex and human, embodying
personal and cultural spaces in ways that offered a spectrum, not some vision of
‘purity’ often ascribed to exotic elders or indigenous healers (Duran & Duran
1995).
Another aspect of the cultural complex underlying my research that I became
aware of was from my Western training in psychology, which contained an
unspoken requirement to avoid highly politicized and historically charged
topics. In contrast, I faced the reality that Macedonia is a highly politicized
country, especially in recent decades since recognition of the country's constitu-
tional name has been vetoed by Greece. This long-standing dispute, stemming
from ancient times, is as alive and influential today for contemporary
Macedonians as it has been for millennia. I recognized that the data I collected
Cultural unconscious in research 669

often reflected a cultural fear of national identity loss and the consequent threat
to maintenance of cultural distinctiveness. As I witnessed the stories, I allowed
myself to feel the anger and frustration as well as the injustice of current politics
and past wrongs. I found that I shared this anger over oppression and being cul-
turally manipulated throughout centuries. I found that participants’ beliefs and
practices (i.e. the birth and death rituals that I studied) were often prompted by
millennia-long collective unconscious imperatives to survive oppression and to
define individuals’ experiences.
By being attentive to how these dynamics reflected cultural complexes, I
continually sought to question what was being split-off and projected in the
interviews as well. Specifically, I noted how our cultural positions and histories
as Macedonians evoked feelings of invisibility, insignificance and denial of our
existence. I heard how the same tensions were evoked, not just in cultural but
also in individual narratives, when individuals discussed their own nuclear fam-
ilies or their marriages through the same lens of loss, rejection and denial of iden-
tity. I think that my work opened me to becoming able to experience and name
how ancient rituals and long-standing cultural histories, as well as current polit-
ical tensions, are reflected in many individuals’ lives and ordinary human prac-
tices (e.g. birth or death rituals) while at the same time, individuals could
interpret broader cultural events through the lens of their own experiences.
Lastly, I believe that my work highlighted the unconscious tensions present
for many immigrants: the juxtaposition of the Westerner and the Macedonian
in me continues to be an ongoing challenge. I believe that there is too little schol-
arly work attending to the dynamic interactions of cultural complexes embed-
ded in cultures and in cultural representations within their individual human
participants. I am also increasingly aware of how complex and dynamic these
interactions are. I hope that further work will attend to the ways in which cul-
tural complexes within individuals and communities influence our personal and
common identity, reflect our worldviews and values, and shape both our past
and our future.

Discussion and conclusions

These case examples highlight the influence of cultural diversity on the
researchers and their approach to research. Our focus in the examples was on
emphasizing the processes through which the cultural unconscious and
cultural complexes entered the research, specifically in a qualitative research
process. Although these examples uniquely reflect our personal and scholarly
backgrounds, we believe that our experiences of integrating
phenomenological and humanistic scholarly process with depth psychological
mindedness may aid others in reflecting on their own scholarship. We have
also found that in re-telling the processes related to our studies, several
themes were revealed to us.
670 O. Yakushko, P. Miles, I. Rajan, B. Bujko, and D. Thomas

First, we all began with a commitment to an active awareness of our own

cultural consciousness and cultural unconscious. We have found that despite
the emphasis on personal reflexivity in qualitative research, any focus on the
unconscious processes and cultural complexes that arise in both the practice
of research and in the data itself remains very limited. This absence reflects
the cultural complexes embedded in Western scholarship; we have had to
come to terms with entrenched complex-based worldviews or omissions that
to us reflected racism, colonization, sexism, ethnocentrism and classism. In
contrast to Holloway and Jefferson's (2000) notion of participants as
‘defended subjects’, we found that we ourselves, as scholars and research
trainees, were ‘defended researchers’. We were appreciative that these
influences could be made conscious through innovative research practices, by
engaging in phenomenological epoche1 and reflexivity as well as through
depth psychological transference dialogues and active imagination. We
sought to work with these unconscious aspects of our lives not only through
research, which propelled us toward this awareness, but also through
personal therapy or analysis and meditation, as well as through connections
with others within our communities. However, as Layton (2006) noted, it is
often in the work itself that unconscious cultural complexes and
assumptions are made clear. We had to begin to interact with layers of
collective and individual unconscious that were often framed within the
context of cultural complexes related to our work. We believe that without
an intention and willingness to engage with such unconscious material,
research studies, like clinical work, will simply reinforce the oppressive social
status quo (Fox et al. 2009). Our research processes made it clear to us how
our own research practices risk further marginalizing those individuals and
social practices that fall outside mainstream cultural norms.
Secondly, as proposed by depth research scholars, our topics and participants
found us just as much as we set out to search for them (Coppin & Nelson 2005;
Romanyshyn 2007; Yakushko & Nelson 2013). Indeed, in re-reading and re-
envisioning our cases for this article, we can see that something larger than
ourselves called us toward topics and people who needed us as much as we
needed them. It is as if the collective unconscious and cultural complexes sought
to work through us as wounded healers/researchers in order to speak to wounds
within the cultures. Whether African American male adolescents, trafficked
Indian girls or Macedonian female elders, these voices – all of whom are typically
marginalized within dominant cultures – spoke to us and through our work.
Thirdly, and related to the above experience of serving something larger
than ourselves and giving voice to those who are marginalized, all of us
experienced a profound connection to ancestral voices. Awareness of the
cultural unconscious in research may lead to this re-connection to that
1
Epoche is a term proposed by phenomenological scholars to denote personal reflexivity processes,
specifically bracketing of researchers’ experience in relation to participants’ experience (Giorgi
2014).
Cultural unconscious in research 671

which was forgotten in our own lives or within dominant cultures – to that
which re-engages us with our ancestors and their experiences (Romanyshyn
2007). For us as researchers, such connection involved not just positive
but also more challenging and negative or pained/painful aspects of our cultures.
Fourthly, the cultural unconscious and cultural complexes became central
not only to the content but also to the process of our research. It was not
only in what we studied but also in how we approached our study that
we uncovered that which was split off in ourselves, our participants and
the broader culture. We faced challenges that loomed larger than ourselves
but, when understood as complex processes, these challenges contributed
to a deeper understanding of ourselves and of our participants. Our
research made us feel human, alive and connected to collective feelings
carried within cultural complexes. Thus, rather than a theoretical or
philosophical construct, we experienced the cultural complex as pulsing
with all that is human including anger, rage, joy, sadness, fear, confusion
and hope.
Fifthly, although we may not initially have approached our studies with
the conscious desire to contextualize our topics within the broader aspects
of cultural unconscious or specific cultural complexes, we have found that
our end ‘products’ indeed speak to these larger cultural shadows. African-
American adolescent males continue to be vilified and traumatized in U.S.
society, driving them into horrific territories of fear, war and poverty (both
external and internal). The re-connection to their ancestral wisdom in the
form of Maat archetype served as grounding for their inner lives. Young
girls in India, who are enslaved in body and spirit, showed how in their pro-
found struggles they also found places of healing, empowerment and peace.
Nevertheless, their tortured bodies and voices should ring in our hearts in
order to make visible the cultural unconscious that demands children as
meat for sexual pleasures. Macedonian female elders, whose voices are all
but forgotten outside their own communities, have held the ancient cultural
threads of life-cycle rituals that are as valuable in today's political and tech-
nology-filled world as in centuries past. Old cultures and with them old
myths, may be sacrificed to the new gods of dominant Western values.
However, it is in their alternate voices, which do not reject the new but
do attend to the past, that the wisdom of the collective and thus the
cultural unconscious can become conscious, offering others containers for
profound life experiences.
Therefore, we hope that our reflections and these case examples may aid
others, who find themselves entering into relation with the cultural
unconscious and cultural complexes as part of their humanistic research
experience. We believe that such studies are a call to us from our own inner
lives as well as from the collective space of the cultures we inhabit, and that
analytically grounded psychology can make a significant contribution to this
process.
672 O. Yakushko, P. Miles, I. Rajan, B. Bujko, and D. Thomas

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TRANSLATIONS OF ABSTRACT

La recherche centrée sur l'aspect culturel a gagné du terrain dans de nombreuses

disciplines, y compris la psychologie. Cependant, dans beaucoup de cas, cette
recherche ne porte aucune attention aux dynamiques inconscientes qui sous-tendent
l'étude de la culture et des êtres humains influencés par la culture. Ces dynamiques
sont probablement particulièrement fortes dans les situations d'oppression et de
marginalisation. De ce fait, cet article cherche à apporter un cadre pour faciliter la
compréhension des dynamiques culturelles, et particulièrement des dynamiques
culturelles inconscientes, dans le champ de la recherche qualitative en psychologie des
profondeurs, recherche influencée par les études jungiennes et post-jungiennes. Une
recherche qui est entreprise avec la visée de rendre l'inconscient conscient cherche à
libérer et à donner du pouvoir non seulement au sujet/objet étudié, mais aussi aux
chercheurs eux-mêmes. Passant brièvement en revue le multiculturalisme dans le
contexte de la psychologie issue de la psychologie analytique, cet article offre plusieurs
exemples qui montrent l'intégration de la conscience de l'inconscient culturel des
chercheurs dans leur étude d'êtres et de sujets culturels

Mots clés: inconscient culturel, recherche qualitative, multiculturalisme, complexe

culturel
674 O. Yakushko, P. Miles, I. Rajan, B. Bujko, and D. Thomas

In vielen Disziplinen hat die kulturell fokussierte Forschung Fahrt aufgenommen,

darunter auch in der Psychologie. Doch ein großer Teil dieser Forschung versagt ihre
Aufmerksamkeit den unbewußten Dynamismen, die dem Studium der Kultur und
kulturell geprägter Menschen zugrunde liegen. Solche Dynamismen können besonders
dann signifikant werden, wenn Probleme der Marginalisierung und Unterdrückung
vorliegen. Daher soll mit diesem Papier versucht werden, einen Rahmen für das
Verständnis von kultureller Dynamik bereitzustellen, vor allem bezüglich unbewußter
kultureller Dynamik, innerhalb tiefenpsychologischer qualitativer von Jungianischer
und post Jungianischer Wissenschaft beeinflußter Forschung. Eine Erkundung, die mit
der Verpflichtung angegangen wird, das Unbewußte bewußt zu machen, versucht nicht
nur, das untersuchte Subjekt / Objekt zu stärken und zu emanzipieren, sondern auch
die Forscher selbst. Nach einem kurzen Überblick über den Multikulturalismus im
Zusammenhang mit der analytisch beeinflußten Psychologie bietet dieses Papier einige
Fallbeispiele, die sich auf Seiten der Forscher auf die Integration der Bewußtheit vom
Vorhandensein eines kulturellen Unbewußten bei ihren Studien über kulturelle Wesen
und Themen konzentrieren

Schlüsselwörter: kulturelles Unbewußtes, qualitative Forschung, Multikulturalismus,

kultureller Komplex

La ricerca culturalmente centrata ha raggiunto un momento di grande sviluppo in molte

discipline, inclusa la psicologia. Al contempo, molte di queste ricerche non riescono a
dare la giusta attenzione alle dinamiche inconsce che sottendono lo studio degli
individui, che sono influenzati dalle culture di appartenenza. Queste dinamiche
possono essere particolarmente rilevanti quando sono presenti temi di
marginalizzazione ed oppressione. Questo articolo si propone di offrire una cornice
per la comprensione delle dinamiche culturali, specialmente le dinamiche culturali
inconsce, nell'ambito della ricerca qualitativa nella psicologia del profondo,
influenzata dagli studiosi junghiani e post-junghiani. L'approccio fondato sull'obiettivo
di rendere conscio l'inconscio, enfatizza non solo il soggetto/oggetto di studio, ma
anche il ruolo degli stessi ricercatori. Presentando una breve rassegna del
multiculturalismo, nell'ambito della psicologia analitica, questo articolo offre diversi
esempi che evidenziano l'integrazione dell'inconscio culturale nella coscienza dei
ricercatori impegnati nello studio di individui e temi culturalmente definiti

Parole chiave: inconscio culturale, ricerca qualitativa, multiculturalismo, complesso

culturale

Культуpнo cфoкуcиpoвaнныe иccлeдoвaния нaчинaют нaбиpaть cилу вo мнoгиx

диcциплинax, включaя пcиxoлoгию. Oднaкo мнoгиe тaкиe иccлeдoвaния нe oбpaщaют
внимaния нa бeccoзнaтeльную динaмику, лeжaщую в ocнoвe изучeния кaк любoй
культуpы, тaк и людeй, пoдвepгaющиxcя культуpным влияниям. Taкaя динaмикa мoжeт
oкaзaтьcя ocoбeннo знaчимoй в тex cлучaяx, кoгдa peчь идeт o тeмax мapгинaлизaции и
пoдaвлeния. Cлeдoвaтeльнo, в нacтoящeй cтaтьe дeлaeтcя пoпыткa ввecти paмку для
пoнимaния культуpнoй динaмики, в ocoбeннocти – бeccoзнaтeльнoй культуpнoй
Cultural unconscious in research 675

динaмики, c пoмoщью кaчecтвeннoгo глубиннoгo пcиxoлoгичecкoгo иccлeдoвaния,

вдoxнoвлeннoгo юнгиaнcкими и пocт-юнгиaнcкими штудиями. Иccлeдoвaниe, в
кoтopoм aвтop пpидepживaeтcя линии нa ocoзнaниe бeccoзнaтeльнoгo, cтpeмитcя
пoддepживaть и coдeйcтвoвaть ocвoбoждeнию нe тoлькo изучaeмыx cубъeктa и
oбъeктa, нo и caмиx иccлeдoвaтeлeй. Пocлe кpaткoгo oбзopa мультикультуpнocти в
кoнтeкcтe aнaлитичecки инфopмиpoвaннoй пcиxoлoгии этa cтaтья пpeдлaгaeт
внимaнию читaтeлeй нecкoлькo пpимepoв, в кoтopыx внимaниe cocpeдoтoчeнo нa
интeгpaции coзнaния иccлeдoвaтeлeй в культуpнoe бeccoзнaтeльнoe изучaeмыx ими тeм
и людeй.

Ключевые слова: культуpнoe бeccoзнaтeльнoe, кaчecтвeннoe иccлeдoвaниe,

мультикультуpнocть, культуpный кoмплeкc

La investigación con atención a factores culturales ha ganado en importancia en diversas

disciplinas, incluyendo la psicología. Sin embargo, la mayor parte de dichas
investigaciones fallan en cuanto a prestar atención a las dinámicas inconscientes que
subyacen al estudio de la cultura y de su influencia en los seres humanos. Dichas
dinámicas pueden ser especialmente significativas cuando existen cuestiones de
marginalidad y de opresión. En virtud de lo cual, el presente ensayo, busca contribuir
ofreciendo un marco de referencia para la comprensión de las dinámicas culturales,
especialmente dinámicas culturales inconscientes, dentro de una investigación
cualitativa en psicología profunda influenciada por estudios Junguianos y post-
Junguianos. Una investigación que es abordada con el compromiso de hacer consciente
lo inconsciente, busca no solo empoderar y liberar al sujeto/objeto estudiado, sino
también a los investigadores mismos. Luego de una breve revisión sobre el
multiculturalismo en el contexto de la psicología analítica, el ensayo ofrece algunos
casos que se focalizan en el reconocimiento por parte de los investigadores del
inconsciente cultural en sus estudios sobre seres culturales y demás tópicos.

Palabras clave: inconsciente cultural, investigación cualitativa, multiculturalismo,

complejo cultural

专注于文化的研究在多个学科中占有主导的地位,其中也包括心理学 然而,这些研究
大多没有关注那些根植于所研究的文化,以及深受文化影响的人类无意识的动力 当
涉及到边缘化和压迫的时候,这些动力可能尤为重要 因此,这篇文章尝试提供一个框
架,用以理解那些深受在荣格与后现代荣格学者影响下的质性研究中的文化的动力,特
别是无意识的文化动力 当一些探究所使用的方法,在努力将无意识意识化,它在为研
究的主体/客体以及对研究者本身进行赋权和解放 文章对分析心理学背景下的多元
文化主义进行了简要的回顾,然后提供了几个个案作为例子,来说明研究者如何在其文
化主题的研究中,整合自身对文化无意识的觉察

关键词: 文化无意识, 质性研究, 多元文化主义, 文化情结