Cracking the Culture

Danielle Stacks wrote a fascinating article Fast Company, entitled Crack This Code, as she followed G. Clotaire Rapaille through India on a quest to crack the Indian cultural code.

Rapaille, well known for his flamboyant style, uses psychoanalytical theories to tap a culture’s "collective unconscious” by running three-hour psychotherapy sessions with large groups of participants. These sessions are famous for having people lie on the floor recounting childhood memories.

While Rapaille speaks about the ineffectiveness of the typical focus group (I agree), I’m not sure I see the subtle difference between his sessions and these groups. One of the keys to understanding any culture is to understand the context of people’s actions and words. It’s hard to understand the context of a culture while sitting in a hotel room.

Interestingly, academics seem to have a big problem with Rapaille’s work. In the FC article Richard A. Shweder, a University of Chicago professor of cultural anthropology and psychology, calls Rapaille's tools the "the soft porn of irrationalism."

I wonder what Grant McCracken thinks?