Imaginal Research Tools Part 1

In my last article I sketched out the six moments (stages) in Imaginal Research proposed by Romanyshyn. Now I will sift through the wealth of his writing to summarise the tools he proposes to support the moments. People often ask me ‘How do you do this? How do you get in touch with the unconscious?’. Hopefully this writing should help. You can skip to the conclusion if you want the short version.

Romanyshyn outlines both the process of transference dialogues and that of a method he calls alchemical hermeneutics. I will write about alchemical hermeneutics in this article and transference dialogues in the next article. He suggests ‘using transference dialogues to differentiate the researcher’s complex draw into a work from the unfinished business in the work’. He elaborates by stating that ‘the alchemical hermeneutic method supplements the process of transference dialogues’.

Alchemical Hermeneutics

Let me start with alchemical hermeneutics as I believe that getting a grasp on the tools outlined in here, will make it easier to understand transference dialogues. Romanyshyn discusses 5 tools in alchemical hermeneutics. They are Dreams, Feeling into the Work, Intuition, Body (lived and symptomatic) and Synchronicity.

Dreams

Romanyshyn states that ‘dreams can function as part of a comprehensive method or path into one’s work’ and ‘the researcher has to make a place for the dream to ‘wound’ him or her’. By this he means the unconscious dream often elucidates a topic from a different perspective from a rational conscious mind. He is also clear that ‘it is not that the dream is the work, rather it is a way of seeing the work, of coming to know it’. He gives a wealth of examples of how dreams have been used in research. You might also find useful an earlier article I wrote on how to record dreams: 3 Easy Steps to Record Your Dreams.

Feeling into the Work

Years ago, whilst working in corporate, I undertook training in using the Myers Briggs Type Indicator. This is a questionnaire created by a mother daughter team to measure the four functions in Jung’s work: Thinking vs Feeling and Sensing vs Intuition. Romanyshyn picks this up with ‘Thinking is a function of the rational mind, while feeling is a function of the feeling heart’. He talks about the two ways feeling can be used. Firstly, to ask ‘who is feeling, in contrast to what is the emotion’. This ‘can uncover not only who is doing the work, but also what aspect of the work is being opened and what is being hidden’. The second way is to consider ‘whether one’s work does or doesn’t make sense’. He also proposes holding ‘sympathy and compassion, as two ways of applying the feeling function in a method with heart’.

Intuition

The other function that is useful for research is that of intuition. Romanyshyn quotes Jung with ‘intuition is not concerned with the present but is rather a sixth sense for hidden possibilities’. Romanyshyn gives a lovely example of one of his students who over the years started to draw in the margins of her lecture notes. These got more defined as the years when on, until she realised that they were all containers. She then began to ‘draw them on fine Italian paper, touch them with colour, refine the details of the embellishments.’ ‘The researcher can cultivate intuition as part of his or her methodology by developing ritual times and spaces for reverie’. More on this when I discuss transference dialogues.

Body

Romanyshyn discusses both the lived body and symptomatic body. ‘The first concerns what phenomenology calls the lived body which is the body one is, and not the body one has, the body as object. The second is the symptomatic body’.

He describes ‘the lived body as the gestural body’ and suggests two ways of working with it. Firstly, to ‘pay attention to the places where they were stopped by the text’ and wonder who is being arrested in these moments’ followed by ‘waiting for an image, a memory, or a felt bodily sense and then work with it’. Secondly, ‘the body of the reader is present in the work […] through the voice’. Thus, by reading aloud ‘the reading itself becomes a living process, and something of the animal mind is felt in the body, in the expansion and the contraction of the chest, in the vibrations felt in the throat, and in the resonances experienced in the sinus cavities and in the ears.’

The symptomatic body can be also reflected on, as it ‘might often be a response to the ego’s defense against letting go of the work’. He considers ‘the symptomatic body as a tension between remembering something that is too vital to forget about the work, while forgetting it because it is too painful to acknowledge. He gives a nice example of a student who was researching Mayan culture. She had a dream where she was ‘in a white Mayan dress’ and her ’arms are cut and bloody’. Over the next few months, she ‘began to itch all over [her] body’. She wondered ‘how this skin condition related to my Mayan dissertation topic’. Romanyshyn is clear that ‘the symptomatic body is not the data of research […] it is a path into the work’.

Synchronicity

Romanyshyn quotes Jung with ‘synchronicity “consists of two factors: a) An unconscious image comes into consciousness either directly […] or indirectly […] in the form of a dream, idea or premonition. B) An objective situation coincides with this content”. Romanyshyn points out how one of his students would ‘invite an occasion of synchronicity’ by asking the question ‘What might I want to consider in relation to my work today?’.

Conclusion

Although these are tools designed to assist in qualitative research, they are still tools that can deepen your psychotherapeutic journey. Pay attention to your dreams, be open to the more subtle feeling and intuitive functions, focus on your body and finally be open to synchronistic events. Be curious about information that doesn’t come neatly packaged as ‘logical’.

In my next article I will flesh out transference dialogues, a process that can also help on your journey into the unconscious.

Gratitude to the photographer: Path in France Photo by Pierre-Etienne Vilbert on Unsplash

Briggs Myers, I., McCaulley, M. H., Quenk, N. L. & Hammer, A. L. (1998). MBTI Manual. A Guide to the Development and Use of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. 3rd Ed. Consulting Psychologists Press, Inc.

Jung, C. G. (1921/1971) Psychological Types. The Collected Works of C. G. Jung. Vol. 6. Princeton University Press

Jung, C. G. (1952/1960) Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle in The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. The Collected Works of C. G Jung. Vol. 8. Princeton University Press.

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