Psychological, Archetypal and Phenomenological Perspectives on Soccer

David Huw Burston

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781138787469
• eBook ISBN: 9781317660606
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Mental Health in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Soccer, or football, attracts vast numbers of passionate fans from all over the world; yet clinical psychology is yet to study it in depth. In this book, David Huw Burston, a consultant football psychology and performance coach, uses a phenomenological research method inspired by Amedeo Giorgi to consider what we can learn from the spirit of the game, and how this can be used positively in the consulting room and on the field of play.

By examining detailed qualitative research with professional soccer players of both sexes, Burston identifies and considers nine particular themes, including the family, god, heroes and dreams, and discusses how what we can learn from the game of football and team culture can be applied to Jungian analysis today.

This book bridges the gap between clinical psychology and sport, outlining potential shortfalls in current youth development in sport, as well as discussing how traditional Jungian archetypes can be identified in everyday settings. It will be of key interest to researchers from both the fields of analytical psychology and sports studies.

Chapter 1 Introduction

DOI: 10.4324/9781315766492-1

Soccer, or football, as it is known outside of America, attracts vast numbers of passionate fans from all over the world, but clinical psychology has yet to study it in depth. Thus, for this book, a phenomenological research method inspired by Amedeo Giorgi was used to interview players from an American Division One University about what it is like to be an aspiring professional soccer player. This Introduction provides a foundation for this book by presenting some background details of how this research arose and what transpired. The book will record the process of a phenomenological design and methodology and examine the insights it revealed using a depth tradition for examining the psyche.

Eight players were recruited to become coresearchers (four from each gender) on the study. Interviews were conducted using standardized open-ended questions, relating to their initial inspiration to play; dreams, achievements, heroes; playing well and poorly; and the team as family. Nine themes emerged from the responses: (1) Family as the reason they play soccer; (2) God as a source of their gifts; (3) the “first” as an achievement; (4) dreams of growth and finishing; (5) parents as heroes; (6) the unstoppable body, elevation and descent; (7) dreams of giving back; (8) the team as a supra family and assistors; (9) winning and losing, inner doubt, solutions, and using shadow language. Themes were then amplified using alchemical methodology revealing inner elemental archetypes present in soccer that would have been familiar to the Greeks and before.

Results suggest that the game of soccer strikes deep archetypal chords, stretching back to our early hunter/gatherer roots, with major achievements described as initiatory experiences. When playing well, coresearchers reported heightened states of mind, embodying mythic figures and gods, unlike playing poorly, where “thinking too much” degraded performance. Coresearchers described a supra family system, emphasizing values of unity and support at the heart of their experience. Coresearchers also indicated diverse gender and age family members as their inspiration to play soccer. As a result of the findings, the idea of the game being a masculine tradition was questioned. Participants described being on a team as benefitting character, confirming recent research that a team may be an emotionally healthy environment for young people. Results suggested that clinical research could perhaps discover creative ways of assisting individuals who may benefit from being involved in such an environment.

Also discussed (in the Conclusion) is how the research revealed soccer as a kind of ancient universal trinity that is being played through the game and through other sports. The study also illuminated issues relating to left and right brain functions and their importance to the individuals playing the game, which in turn correlates to Jungian ideas of the four functions of thinking, sensing, feeling and intuition. From this, implications arose regarding the wider educational syllabus, and how soccer may be a healthier occupation for the young than first imagined. The study also revealed deeper reasons as to why many important social, religious and literary figures were deeply attached to the sport, including Albert Camus, Niels Bohr and Pope John Paul II.

Soccer, the world’s most popular sport (Tharoor, 2008), is a global phenomenon; its professional players are raised up into modern-day cultural heroes. Using a phenomenological approach, the study asked the players themselves to speak about the experience of playing soccer and being on a team. The specific research question explored from an archetypal perspective was this: “What is the lived experience of being an aspiring professional soccer player on a team?” Beyond soccer, this study seeks to explore the useful purpose that clinical psychology can serve sporting cultures as well as other cultures that perhaps have similar themes, difficulties, and challenges. The coincidental timing of the London 2012 Olympic Games provided a useful backdrop to the study and presented us with the opportunity to review ancient archetypal forces that still appear to be with us today, observed by an ever-growing world population of viewers.

This Introduction will first provide an overview of soccer as a global phenomenon, and of possible anthropological antecedents of the sport. There will then be a brief section on the Jungian shadow, with an accompanying rationale as to why this archetype may be of relevance to the study. Then, my background and interest in the topic will be outlined. Some information about the typical soccer culture will be given, in order to provide a context for the world our coresearchers inhabit. Possible relevance of the topic for clinicians working in psychology will be examined, indicating the key concerns that may be relevant to all young people in the West.

Chapter 2 will then reflect some of the previous literature related to soccer and the psyche of the performer. As the chapter concludes there will be space to state the research question. In Chapter 3, the choice of phenomenological methodology will be introduced with some background on the subject, as well as some of the contributions made by the founding practitioners of phenomenological methodology. The data collected as a result of the interviews will be outlined in Chapter 4, with coresearcher responses outlined in depth. Chapter 5 will return again to the data, in the Discussion section, exploring in more depth the repetitive themes, alchemical transference and reactions that took place, and the implications they had for the study. By means of a redactive process, the study will then culminate in the Conclusion by examining the insights that emerge from the study and the implications for further research and current trends in education.

The soccer phenomenon: A brief overview

For many individuals, identification with a team is a passion that stretches back many generations. In England, the Football League, the organization that runs the league tables, was founded in 1888 and the modern game dates to 1863, although it has ancient roots (Goldblatt, 2008). A recent observation from Yale Center for the Study of Globalization reported:

Thousands of years ago, the Chinese, Greeks and Vikings all played games kicking balls about. But the modern game of soccer was born in England and the popularity of that particular sport has taken over the world. Thanks to satellite television, British soccer teams have hundreds of millions of fans all over the world and sport executives look to expand their audiences to more lucrative markets.

(Tharoor, 2008, para. 1)

The game of soccer has a global following, now further bolstered by the communications media revolution. This has increased the size of the audience and enhanced further the profile of the sport in the global community. One team alone, Manchester United, has an estimated 659 million fans (Daily Telegraph, 2012), and almost half of those supporters are in Asia-Pacific. In England alone, over ten years earlier, J. Johnson (2001) remarked:

Only 816,500 people now attend church weekly (995,700 if you count the kids they drag along). The over-64’s make up the largest proportion of this population, so as in Spain, church attendance is set to dwindle in the future. Let‘s compare this with attendance at England’s soccer grounds: over 700,000 people attended matches in the Premiership and the Nationwide league this weekend. That’s nearly as many as attend church, which is especially significant when you consider that all these people actually had to pay to watch and couldn’t just turn up for free.

(para. 1)

Tharoor (2008), in an article discussing fans reactions to the globalization of their sport, wrote:

Soccer is quite aptly called the “world’s game.” The sport’s superstars are household names around the globe. Its landmark competition—the World Cup—is watched by hundreds of millions. Even gun-toting insurgents in Iraq can be spotted wearing replica shirts of Europe’s most fashionable clubs. …The EPL [English Premier League] is already a global phenomenon—beamed to nearly 200 countries and into more than 600 million homes. Even Middlesborough, a decidedly mediocre team, has organized support groups in Indonesia and Singapore. South African football officials considered shifting kick-off times of their domestic league to avoid coinciding with those of the EPL; many fans in South Africa prefer huddling around TV sets to watch their heroes in England than follow their own club teams. Uganda is notoriously divided between London clubs Chelsea and Arsenal, with the latter’s Kampala supporters making a hit music video celebrating their love for the team. Here and elsewhere, the EPL has left an indelible mark.

(paras. 2–6)

Tharoor’s description of insurgents demonstrating a loyalty that transcends borders suggests something universal and significant is happening, and this study aspires to find out more.

How is it that these performers and clubs mean so much to so many people? In 2010, soccer’s world governing body, FIFA reported that they expected over 700 million people throughout the world watched a World Cup™ match. According to Nicolas Ericson, director of FIFA’s TV division, “the United States had reported a 50 per cent increase in overall figures compared to 2006.” And he continued, “I think the audience for the final will be bigger than 2006, when it was watched by 700 million people” (Homewood, 2010). The 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa™ website’s banner headline summed it all up: “Almost half the world tuned in at home to watch.”

In 2010, FIFA described how soccer was:

shown in every single country and territory on Earth, including Antarctica and the Arctic Circle, generating record-breaking viewing figures in many TV markets around the world. The in-home television coverage of the competition reached over 3.2 billion people around the world, or 46.4 per cent of the global population, based on viewers watching a minimum of over one minute of coverage. This represents an eight per cent rise on the number of viewers recorded during the 2006 FIFA World Cup Germany™.

Based on viewers watching a minimum of 20 consecutive minutes of coverage, the 2010 tournament reached nearly a third of the world population with 2.2 billion viewers, or three per cent higher than in 2006, according to data compiled by KantarSport on behalf of FIFA. The average in-home global audience for each match was 188.4 million, up six per cent on 2006, while the highest average audience measured was for the final at 530.9 million, up five per cent on 2006.

To what extent do the viewers and the players tap into or embody archetypes that resonate within the deeper nature of humankind? Most fervent supporters of soccer clubs watch matches hoping to see their teams win. For some teams, legions of fans the world over simultaneously react joyfully when they savor victory. However, opponents wish to do the same, and the supporters have to rely on their heroes to win the day. In terms of an archetypal story, the hero’s journey appears to be constellated here. Favorite players must demonstrate the capacity to transcend opponents and any obstacles placed in their way:

The hero’s main feat is to overcome the monster of darkness: it is the long-hoped-for and expected triumph of consciousness over the unconscious. The coming of consciousness was probably the most tremendous experience of primeval times, for with it a world came into being whose existence no one had suspected before. “And God said, Let there be light” is the projection of that immemorial experience of the separation of consciousness from the unconscious.

(Jung, 1951/1990, p. 167)

The popularity of the game suggests that its heroes and teams relate and connect to the human psyche on a significant level. This study will aim to identify at least some of the universal archetypal stories and identities that are so compelling for so many people today. Modern players are often men from comparatively humble origins now made into wealthy, national heroes. Every movement of these players is scrutinized by a hungry press and media, fuelled by the public thirst for information. Jung (1950/1990) discussed the role of the cult hero in the essay “Concerning Rebirth” in The archetypes and the collective unconscious. In speaking of identification with the hero, Jung used the sacred Greek ritual, the Metamorphosis of Apuleius, as an illustration. This ritual also has an element of public performance: “The initiate, an ordinary human being, is elected to be Helios; he is crowned with a crown of palms and clad in the mystic mantle, whereupon the assembled crowd pays homage to him” (Jung, 1950/1990, p. 128). Modern players are indeed paid homage, normal men “raised up,” who achieve widespread adoration and fame.

Anthropological antecedents of soccer

Is soccer a purely modern phenomenon? Or has there always been a space for young men and women to work together in teams? In his book, Your brain at work, author David Rock (2009) uses modern analogies and case studies, complementing them with the latest advances in neuroscience, to connect the implications of research on improving quality of life. In one such case study, Rock notes that a young man had “recently been watching horror movies with friends, a modern version of an ancient communal ritual where young adult males practice emotional regulation to prepare for a hunt” (p. 221). On reflection, I had never considered that there was a ritual for preparing young people for hunting. However, this was something that became apparent to me when observing young soccer players preparing for a match. Rock’s implication is that our ancestors attached importance to the idea of helping young hunters and warriors with emotional regulation. We will never know exactly what our early ancestors did, but my experience suggests that there is currently a kind of behavioral blueprint being reenacted in the playing and supporting of soccer.

Edward Tylor, one of the foremost evolutionary psychologists, was a man who influenced and informed Jung (Shamdasani, 2003, p. 274). Tylor was professor of anthropology at Oxford University (1832–1917) and asserted that from generation to generation within society we carry over traits and patterns of behavior that he called survivals. “These were processes, customs, and opinions that had been carried over by habit into a new state of society from that in which they originated. They were remnants of an older condition of culture” (p. 275). Is the soccer world a representation of a survival? To some extent, soccer is a process and custom in the literal sense, an enactment which is meaningful in some way to many people throughout the world.

Many children and adults play the game in a casual, spontaneous way on any patch of ground. However, the organized playing of soccer is mostly conducted in a league form. Teams vie with each other for a ranked place near the top. Each week the teams, comprised of eleven individuals, face a new opponent and compete for the points. In England and the US teams in professional leagues will all visit each other, and be visited by their opponents. Going “out on the road” may be an ancient situation being enacted for young men who must go and win, draw or at worst be defeated and come home with not even a point. In 1995, Harold Bloom wrote The Lucifer principle: A scientific expedition into the forces of history, which explored the origins of human instincts and actions from our earliest times. Bloom suggests that “Nature’s amusements are cruel” (p. 25), describing how our ancestors would have by necessity encountered very precarious situations and dangers. He suggested that nature’s way is to regard young men in many ways as expendable, perhaps the price to be paid for progress. Of course, historically, young men are the ones likely to fight “the enemy” or the elements. Joseph Campbell (1972), in a chapter entitled “Mythologies of War and Peace,” discussed the ancient mythological lineage of warriors and war within society. Campbell identified a theme here, which could in itself be a definition of soccer as a sport:

In India the governing law of international relations has for centuries been known as the matsya nyaya, “law of the fish,” which is, to wit, that the big ones eat the little ones and the little ones have to be smart. War is the natural duty of princes, and periods of peace are merely interludes, like the periods of rest between boxing rounds.

(p. 200)...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• List of figures and tables
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Soccer and the psyche of the performer
• 3 A phenomenological and alchemical approach to investigating soccer
• 4 The interview transcripts and situated structures
• 5 Depth discussion and analysis of the data
• References
• Appendix Informed consent document
• Index