Bourdieu and Jung: A Thought Partnership to Explore Personal, Social, and Collective Unconscious Influences on Professional Practices

Abstract

This paper introduces a thought partnership between Pierre Bourdieu and Carl Jung used to explore clinical play therapists’ understanding and critical reflexivity of unconscious influences on their relational practices with parents. The partnership is situated within a broader methodological partnership between Paul Ricoeur and Jung discussed by the authors in another paper in this issue. The purpose of the Bourdieu and Jung partnership is to design a comprehensive theoretical tool kit that enables the exploration of the interrelated nature of personal, social, and collective unconscious influences on professional practices. The paper discusses seven Bourdieusian and ten Jungian thinking tools and how they were brought together within a critical imaginal hermeneutic approach drawn from the first author’s doctoral study. The application of the conceptual partnership to the study’s text sets is then discussed to provide an in-depth structural analysis of the study’s phenomenon. The results highlight how the application of the thinking tools provide a critical and systemic awareness of how personal, social, and collective unconscious influences shape professional practices. Implications for professional practice are discussed as well as the role the Bourdieusian and Jungian thinking tools can play in enhancing the fundamental aims of qualitative research, particularly critical inquiry.