Imaginal Research

In an earlier article I wrote about quantitative and qualitative research. In this article I want to dive into one of the three qualitative research methods, that of Imaginal Research (Romanyshyn 2013). I thought you might find interesting the structure that can be used to explore the unconscious. In my next article I will outline some of the tools used in this process.

Romanyshyn (2013) comments that using an Imaginal Research approach allows the researcher to move “towards a place of individuation”. Jung (1972) proposes a goal of psychotherapy that is individuation rather than individualism: “Individuation therefore, can only mean a process of psychological development that fulfils the individual qualities given; in other words, it is a process by which a man becomes the definite, unique being he in fact is. In doing so he does not become ‘selfish’ in the ordinary sense of the word”.

Romanyshyn (2013) points out that this form of research has “a different orientation … its first direction is not forward into new areas of knowledge. Rather, its first move is backwards, towards what has been lost, forgotten, or left behind”. I am reminded of the same orientation in Māori philosophy where “In Māori thinking, the past is before us because we can see it: we walk backwards into the future since we cannot look and see what it will bring. This orientation to the world encourages us to reflect on and learn from the past” (Stewart, 2021).

Romanyshyn (2013) states that “The Psychologist who does re-search with the soul in mind is a border figure. He or she stands in the gap between the conscious and the unconscious”. He notes that “this gap plays itself out in the tension between what one says and what is always left unsaid … making the work of knowing a labor of … unforgetting what has been forgotten”.

To help step into the gap and recover what has been forgotten, he proposes using a myth as “the archetypal pattern for research”. This myth is that of Orpheus and Eurydice, where “Orpheus is … the poet of the gap” with “his journey to the underworld in search of Eurydice”. Romanyshyn (2013) proposes that the “six Orphic moments of research as re-search chart a process of mourning in which the tension between the researcher’s desire to possess the work are challenged by the unfinished business in the soul of the work”.

The First Moment: Being Claimed by the Work

The story of Orpheus and Eurydice is one of love. “Charmed by Orpheus’s voice, Eurydice is taken hold of by him”. This is similar for the researcher, where they are drawn to a topic yet ultimately the work is not really about this. “Claimed by a work through his or her complexes, the wounded researcher sees the work through the lens of those ancestors who linger with their still unanswered questions, the ancestors for whom the wounded researcher becomes a witness and a spokesperson”.

The Second Moment: Losing the Work/Mourning as Invitation

In the next part of the myth, we learn that Orpheus loses Eurydice. Similarly, in this phase, there is an invitation for the researcher to let go of the topic that claimed them to fall into an abyss. In doing so, “this phase of mourning has to do with the ego letting go of its hold upon the work”. He emphasises that the “researcher whose work has collapsed and resists all efforts to restore it falls into such an abyss”. It is in this abyss that “the loss could be re-membered”. This is often a tricky phase for the researcher as it can be frightening to ‘let go’ and trust that there is a deeper unconscious level below. Often, they want to cling on to something that they have been drawn to.

The Third Moment: Descending into the Work/Mourning as Denial

Orpheus descended into the depths of the underworld to bring Eurydice back up into the world by persuading “the gods to release her back to life” by using his abilities as a poet and singer.  The important point to note is the motivation. Orpheus was doing this to soothe his loss and mourning of Eurydice; “he is not willing to stay there in the underworld with her” and “he wants things the way they were”.

The same shape occurs in the research. Often the researcher has struggled to let go of their initial idea and they respond, “by re-doubling one’s efforts to keep the work on track, to bend it to one’s will, to shape it, and shape it again, along its original lines”. Two behaviours are helpful in this phase of research. Firstly, to remember that “re-search that would keep soul in mind is a matter of the flesh and one is drawn into research as re-search not as a disembodied and dispassionate mind, but as a full flesh-and-blood human being”. I am often inviting my clients to consider their body response: ‘what is happening in your body, what can you feel?’. Secondly, that there is an invitation to slow down: “the slowing down forced her to realize that the work was integrating itself, even as she was struggling to integrate it on her terms”. Movement and being busy can be a defence against sinking deeper into the unconscious.

The Fourth Moment: Looking Back at the Work/Mourning as Separation

Orpheus convinced the gods of the underworld to release Eurydice to him, on terms that he does not look back on the return journey to the world. However, “he turns to see if she is still following his lead” and “in that backward glance, Orpheus loses Eurydice for a second time”. Importantly, “until that fateful turn … Orpheus does not know who Eurydice is in her own right, and thus he cannot mourn his loss of her”.

It is here that “the researcher in this moment of the backward glance has to let go of the work as a means to his or her own ends” and “when the work has come to a standstill, the work is also about to begin”. In my client work, when I have sense of something turning around 180 degrees, I find it heralds a great sense of growth in them. I am reminded of this point in the research process. Indeed, Romanyshyn (2013) states: “the backward glance is an invitation to follow the soul of the work. But to do so is no easy task. Indeed, it requires that change of tune, which is a kind of dismemberment of one’s familiar and comfortable style”.

The Fifth Moment: Dismembered by the Work/Mourning as Transformation

Following the backward glance, and the second loss, Orpheus is “dismembered. But the myth also tells us that this dismemberment is the condition of his transformation”. The “truly letting go of someone or something is the way to find what has been lost, to be with it beyond the need to possess or control it”. Similarly, “the researcher who lets go of the work begins to imagine it in a different way, from its point of view, beyond his or her possession of it”. “The work is no longer about the researcher. It is about the weight of history in the work that has been waiting for its voice”.

The Sixth Moment: The Eurydician Question: Mourning as Individuation

Now that Orpheus and Eurydice are separate and in different realms, Eurydice can come into her own. Thus, in this last stage of the research “Eurydice is the one who reclaims the soul of the work, the one who returns the work to itself”. Importantly, “mourning, here is a creative process that frees the one who mourns as well as the one or thing that is mourned from their claims upon each other, Thus, mourning is an act of individuation”. Romanyshyn (2013) notes that many of his students have “a strange mix of joy and sorrow at the recognition that having been in service to something other than themselves”.

In my next article I will explore some of the tools that Romanyshyn (2013) proposes to work through the six moments. Meanwhile if you have enjoyed this, you might like to read his book.

Jung, C. G. (1972). Two Essays on Analytical Psychology. Princeton University Press.

Romanyshyn, R. D. (2013). The Wounded Researcher. Research with Soul in Mind. Spring Journal Books.

Stewart, G. T. (2021). Māori Philosophy. Indigenous Thinking from Aotearoa. Bloomsbury Academic.