Sixteen Years Later: Revisiting Cultural Complexes and the Roots of Archetypal Thematic Analysis (ATA) 1

Abstract Written as a letter to my 28‐year‐old self, this paper explores the development of my engagement with cultural complexes . On August 18, 2009, I finished a chapter applying cultural complexes to a history of China, complete with elaborate charts that seemed to confirm a process by which cultural complexes are formed, and how China’s then recent actions during the Beijing Olympic Games (i.e., utilising 7‐year‐old Yang Peiyi’s vocals yet refusing to allow her to perform at the opening ceremony, opting instead for the lip‐syncing of 9‐year‐old Lin Miaoke and the initial cover‐up of classical dancer Liu Yan’s accident during rehearsals) seemed to confirm the constellation of emotional and behavioural patterns that could be usefully assembled under the concept. While this paper is an opportunity to reflect on my critical assessment of cultural complexes, it is equally an example of autoethnographic study and a meditation on personal archival practices within a post‐ and neo‐Jungian framework. Crucially, an autoethnographic approach has facilitated an understanding of how the development of archetypal thematic analysis (ATA) (in collaboration with Ann Yeoman) stems from my thinking around, and appraisal of, cultural complexes. ATA is offered as a complement to cultural complex theory (CCT) in the hopes that a mobilisation of both can produce a methodological expression of a ‘third way’ or what Paul Preciado calls a mutant psychoanalysis .