Rediscovering the Warrior Within: The Warrior Archetype in Elite English Football Academies Nicholas A. Zuch with: Clive Palmer, Stuart Wilkinson, & Cliff Olsson University of Central Lancashire
1.
Introduction
3.
This poster explores the unconscious mind through a Post-Jungian perspective to propose an alternative theory to define successful and unsuccessful psychosocial talent development in elite English football academies. Archetypes, according to Jungian/Post-Jungian theory, are part of an impersonal unconscious system, inherited through ancestry, and innate to all. Individuation, or the bridging of the conscious and unconscious, is understood to be a complex process underpinned by numerous psychosocial, biological, cultural, and environmental factors, which are believed to either facilitate or impede psychic maturation1. The Warrior, the Hero archetype, and their bipolar forms, situated within the animus in the collective unconscious of the human psyche, have been suggested to have the potential to positively or negatively influence talent development depending upon which archetype is manifested into the individual’s consciousness2. It is the researcher’s aim to investigate this hypothesis in the context of football.
2. The Immature, Mature, & Bipolar Warrior in Sport Warrior
Hero
Grandstander Bully Warrior Sadist Masochist
Data Analysis
Inter-rater reliability questionnaire’s were used to increase validity of the inferences used to establish these themes.
Results
5a.
Profiles of the Warrior Archetype in English Football Academies
Ares
Athena
Paris Primary
Hero
Coward
Heracules
Tertiary
Tertiary
Gr. Bully
Coward
Morata5 Rashford6 Neymar7 Balotelli8
(Jastrow, 2006)10
Orestes
Gr. Bully
(Pederson, 2006)11
Jason
Primary
Secondary
Secondary
Secondary
Hero
Masochist
Tertiary
Tertiary
Gr. Bully
Hero
Gr. Bully
(Stevenson,
Hero
2009)12
(maicar.com,
2006)13
Conclusions/ Recommendations
Summary of findings In this exploratory study, the researcher found that • 9-10 year old’s in English academies appeared to display multiple variations of the warrior within English football academies with some potentially aiding talent development more than others. • Supportive paternal figures, ‘tribal’ club culture, games-based practices with individual-specific interventions and systematic ‘planned trauma’s could facilitate access to the warrior archetype Recommendations Further research studies around both proposals are needed before any definitive claims can be made.
Coward
Primary
Tertiary
Keane4
Secondary
Primary
Moore & Gillette, 20131
Gr. Bully
Masochist
Secondary
Tertiary
Warrior
Puyol3
Sadist
Secondary
(theoi.com, 2017)9
Primary
Warrior Archetype
Games-based practices with individual specific interventions
‘Tribal’ Club Culture
6.
Thematic analysis of observations and interviews was utilized to establish major and minor themes of observations and interviews.
Masochist
Hero
Use of Systematic ‘Planned Trauma's’
Stage 2 – Stage 2 comprised of 3 semi-structured interviews with pivotal academy staff members which included the head of coaching, the lead foundation phase coach, and an under 9’s coach who had coached the majority of both age groups.
Primary
Coward
Supportive Paternal Figures
Stage 1 – Stage 1 consisted of 8 field observations of training sessions and matches of the under 9 and under 10 age groups. Observations were equally distributed.
4.
Results
Mediators of the Warrior Archetype in the Foundation Phase of English Football Academies
A two stage ethnographic study that adopted an interpretivist approach was conducted within a category 3 English football academy.
Warrior
Sadist
5b.
Methods
Coward
Gr. Bully
Coward
(Thorvaldsen, 2008)14
7.
References
1. Moore, R. & Gillette, D. 2013, King, Warrior, Magician, Lover: Rediscovering the Archetypes of the Mature Masculine, Harper One, San Francisco. 2. Papadopoulos, R.K. 2012, "Jung's epistemology and methodology" in The Handbook of Jungian Psychology: Theory, Practice, and Applications, ed. R.K. Papadopoulos, 1st edn, Routledge, London, pp. 7-53. *3 to 14 listed in additional information*
Zuch, N.A., Palmer, C., Wilkinson, C. and Olsson, C. (2017) Rediscovering the warrior within: the warrior archetype in elite english football academies. Presentation at the BASES – FEPSAC Conference, University of Nottingham, UK. 29th November. Contact Details:
[email protected] 