Clotaire Rapaille

Last updated
G. Clotaire Rapaille
Born (1941-08-05) August 5, 1941 (age 83)
NationalityFrench
Occupation Marketing
Spouses
  • Missy de Bellis [1] who also goes by the name Missy de Bellis Rapaille de St. Roch [2]
  • Patricia Fitoussi Rapaille of Boca Raton, Florida (ex-wife)

Gilbert Clotaire Rapaille, known as G. Clotaire Rapaille, is a French marketing consultant and the CEO and Founder of Archetype Discoveries Worldwide. [3] Rapaille is also an author, who has published on topics in psychology, marketing, sociology and cultural anthropology.

Contents

Early life and education

Rapaille was born in France and immigrated to the United States in the early 80s.

Rapaille attended The Paris Institute of Political Sciences for a degree in Political and Social Sciences and later went on to receive a PhD in Social Psychology from Paris-Sorbonne University. [4]

Career

In addition to his books, he is known for advising politicians and advertisers on how to influence people's unconscious decision making. Rapaille's work identifies the unstated needs and wants of people in a certain culture or country as cultural archetypes. [5]

Rapaille developed his theory on the brain after working as a psychologist for autistic children and studying Konrad Lorenz theory of Imprints and John Bowlby theory of attachment. [6] [7] This work led him to believe that while children learn a given word and the idea connected with it, they associate it with certain emotions. He called that primal emotional association an imprint. This imprint determines our attitude towards a particular thing. These pooled individual imprints make up a collective cultural unconscious, which unconsciously pre-organize and influence the behavior of a culture. [8] [9]

Rapaille subscribes to the triune brain theory of Paul D. MacLean, which describes three distinct brains: the cortex, limbic, and reptilian. Beneath the cortex, the seat of logic and reason, is the limbic, which houses emotions. Camouflaged underneath those is Rapaille's theorized brain—the reptilian. [10]

Rapaille believes that buying decisions are strongly influenced by the reptilian brain, which is made up of the brain stem and the cerebellum. Only accessible via the subconscious, the reptilian brain is the home of our intrinsic instincts. It programs us for two major things: survival and reproduction. Rapaille proposes that in a three-way battle between the cortical, the limbic (home of emotion) and the reptilian areas, the reptilian always wins, because survival comes first. This theory has become the basis for his thoughts on what a product means to consumers on the most fundamental level. [11]

His theory that culture gets imprinted into the "Reptilian Brain" during early childhood [12] has been heavily contradicted by scientific evidence. [13] His practice of leading managers into regression sessions to tap into their unconscious in an attempt to discover a "code" word, has also been cited as "primitive" and has been heavily contradicted by scientific evidence. [13]

In the opening of his book, 7 Secrets of Marketing, he says, "Cultures, like individuals, have an unconscious. This unconscious is active in each of us, making us do things we might not be aware of." [14] This collective cultural unconscious can be further defined as a pool of shared imprinting experiences that unconsciously pre-organize and influence the behavior of a culture. [15]

Rapaille's claim of technique of "archetype discovery" stems from the psychoanalytic methods pioneered by the Viennese psychologist Ernest Dichter. This technique doesn't ask what people want, but why they want it. [16] These research methods focus on finding what he calls the “code”, the unconscious meaning people give to a particular product, service or relationship. [17] Rapaille posits that sublimated emotional memories occupy a place between each individual's unconscious (Freud) and the collective unconscious of the entire human race (Jung). [16]

Rapaille appeared in a Frontline episode about marketing entitled "The Persuaders", which first aired on November 9, 2004 on PBS in the United States. [18]

Published works

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Emotion</span> Conscious subjective experience of humans

Emotions are physical and mental states brought on by neurophysiological changes, variously associated with thoughts, feelings, behavioral responses, and a degree of pleasure or displeasure. There is no scientific consensus on a definition. Emotions are often intertwined with mood, temperament, personality, disposition, or creativity.

Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Its subject matter includes the behavior of humans and nonhumans, both conscious and unconscious phenomena, and mental processes such as thoughts, feelings, and motives. Psychology is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries between the natural and social sciences. Biological psychologists seek an understanding of the emergent properties of brains, linking the discipline to neuroscience. As social scientists, psychologists aim to understand the behavior of individuals and groups.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Carl Jung</span> Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist (1875–1961)

Carl Gustav Jung was a Swiss psychiatrist, psychotherapist and psychologist who founded the school of analytical psychology. He was a prolific author, illustrator, and correspondent, and a complex and controversial character, perhaps best known through his "autobiography" Memories, Dreams, Reflections.

The concept of an archetype appears in areas relating to behavior, historical psychology, philosophy and literary analysis.

Collective unconscious refers to the unconscious mind and shared mental concepts. It is generally associated with idealism and was coined by Carl Jung. According to Jung, the human collective unconscious is populated by instincts, as well as by archetypes: ancient primal symbols such as The Great Mother, the Wise Old Man, the Shadow, the Tower, Water, and the Tree of Life. Jung considered the collective unconscious to underpin and surround the unconscious mind, distinguishing it from the personal unconscious of Freudian psychoanalysis. He believed that the concept of the collective unconscious helps to explain why similar themes occur in mythologies around the world. He argued that the collective unconscious had a profound influence on the lives of individuals, who lived out its symbols and clothed them in meaning through their experiences. The psychotherapeutic practice of analytical psychology revolves around examining the patient's relationship to the collective unconscious.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Instinct</span> Behaviour due to innate biological factors

Instinct is the inherent inclination of a living organism towards a particular complex behaviour, containing innate (inborn) elements. The simplest example of an instinctive behaviour is a fixed action pattern (FAP), in which a very short to medium length sequence of actions, without variation, are carried out in response to a corresponding clearly defined stimulus.

Primal therapy is a trauma-based psychotherapy created by Arthur Janov, who argued that neurosis is caused by the repressed pain of childhood trauma. Janov argued that repressed pain can be sequentially brought to conscious awareness for resolution through re-experiencing specific incidents and fully expressing the resulting pain during therapy. Primal therapy was developed as a means of eliciting the repressed pain; the term Pain is capitalized in discussions of primal therapy when referring to any repressed emotional distress and its purported long-lasting psychological effects. Janov believed that talking therapies deal primarily with the cerebral cortex and higher-reasoning areas and do not access the source of Pain within the more basic parts of the central nervous system.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Analytical psychology</span> Jungian theories

Analytical psychology is a term coined by Carl Jung, a Swiss psychiatrist, to describe research into his new "empirical science" of the psyche. It was designed to distinguish it from Freud's psychoanalytic theories as their seven-year collaboration on psychoanalysis was drawing to an end between 1912 and 1913. The evolution of his science is contained in his monumental opus, the Collected Works, written over sixty years of his lifetime.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Triune brain</span> Model of evolutionary neurology proposed by Paul McLean

The triune brain is a model of the evolution of the vertebrate forebrain and behavior, proposed by the American physician and neuroscientist Paul D. MacLean in the 1960s. The triune brain consists of the reptilian complex, the paleomammalian complex, and the neomammalian complex (neocortex), viewed each as independently conscious, and as structures sequentially added to the forebrain in the course of evolution. According to the model, the basal ganglia are in charge of primal instincts, the limbic system is in charge of emotions, and the neocortex is responsible for objective or rational thoughts.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">James Hillman</span> American psychologist (1926–2011)

James Hillman was an American psychologist. He studied at, and then guided studies for, the C.G. Jung Institute in Zürich. He founded a movement toward archetypal psychology and retired into private practice, writing and traveling to lecture, until his death at his home in Connecticut.

Depth psychology refers to the practice and research of the science of the unconscious, covering both psychoanalysis and psychology. It is also defined as the psychological theory that explores the relationship between the conscious and the unconscious, as well as the patterns and dynamics of motivation and the mind. The theories of Sigmund Freud, Carl Gustav Jung, and Alfred Adler are all considered its foundations.

Archetypal psychology was initiated as a distinct movement in the early 1970s by James Hillman, a psychologist who trained in analytical psychology and became the first Director of the Jung Institute in Zürich. Hillman reports that archetypal psychology emerged partly from the Jungian tradition whilst drawing also from other traditions and authorities such as Henry Corbin, Giambattista Vico, and Plotinus.

Emotional contagion is a form of social contagion that involves the spontaneous spread of emotions and related behaviors. Such emotional convergence can happen from one person to another, or in a larger group. Emotions can be shared across individuals in many ways, both implicitly or explicitly. For instance, conscious reasoning, analysis, and imagination have all been found to contribute to the phenomenon. The behaviour has been found in humans, other primates, dogs, and chickens.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Psychodynamics</span> Approach to psychology

Psychodynamics, also known as psychodynamic psychology, in its broadest sense, is an approach to psychology that emphasizes systematic study of the psychological forces underlying human behavior, feelings, and emotions and how they might relate to early experience. It is especially interested in the dynamic relations between conscious motivation and unconscious motivation.

<i>Black Skin, White Masks</i> 1952 book by Frantz Fanon

Black Skin, White Masks is a 1952 book by philosopher-psychiatrist Frantz Fanon. The book is written in the style of autoethnography, with Fanon sharing his own experiences while presenting a historical critique of the effects of racism and dehumanization, inherent in situations of colonial domination, on the human psyche.

Teenage rebellion is a part of social development in adolescents in order for them to develop an identity independent from their parents or family and a capacity for independent decision-making. They may experiment with different roles, behaviors, and ideologies as part of this process of developing an identity. Teenage rebellion has been recognized within psychology as a set of behavioral traits that supersede class, culture, or race; some psychologists, however, have disputed the universality of the phenomenon. According to Terror Management Theory, the child's allegiance to parental authority and worldviews can weaken after the discovery that parents, like themselves and everyone else, are mortal. This realization creates an unconscious need for security that is broader than what the parents alone provide. This can lead to new cultural allegiances, in the search for a more enduring sense of meaning. Teenagers seek to perceive themselves a valued contributor to aspects of culture that more convincingly outlive or transcend the mortal individual's lifespan. However, since the parents also instill their cultural beliefs onto the child, if the child does not come to associate their parents' mortality with their cultural beliefs, the chances of rebellion decrease.

Jungian archetypes are a concept from psychology that refers to a universal, inherited idea, pattern of thought, or image that is present in the collective unconscious of all human beings. The psychic counterpart of instinct, archetypes are thought to be the basis of many of the common themes and symbols that appear in stories, myths, and dreams across different cultures and societies. Some examples of archetypes include those of the mother, the child, the trickster, and the flood, among others. The concept of the collective unconscious was first proposed by Carl Jung, a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst.

In psychology, limbic imprint refers to the process by which prenatal, perinatal and post-natal experiences imprint upon the limbic system, causing lifelong effects. The term is used to explain how early care of a fetus and newborn is important to lifelong psychological development and has been used as an argument for alternative birthing methods, and against circumcision. Some also refer to the concept as the human emotional map, deep-seated beliefs, and values that are stored in the brain's limbic system. When a fetus or newborn experiences trauma, the brain will register trauma as normal affecting the newborn into adulthood. However, when a fetus or newborn does not experience trauma, the brain will develop healthy coping mechanisms that work effectively into adulthood.

<i>Move Up</i>

Move UP is a nonfiction book written by Dr. Clotaire Rapaille and Dr. Andrés Roemer in 2013 that explains upward social mobility from a biological and cultural perspective, and how societies and nations create adequate environments for maintaining the bio-logical requirements of the human species. The book is based on the latest research in biology, evolutionary psychology, behavioral economics, neuroscience and anthropology.

Facial coding is the process of measuring human emotions through facial expressions. Emotions can be detected by computer algorithms for automatic emotion recognition that record facial expressions via webcam. This can be applied to better understanding of people’s reactions to visual stimuli.

References

  1. ↑ "Palm Beach Today International Feb. 6, 2013". 6 February 2013.
  2. ↑ "Beyond the Hedges: Getting to the root of a Palm Beach sale".
  3. ↑ "Who We Are - Archetype Discoveries Worldwide". Archived from the original on 2015-05-30. Retrieved 2015-05-21.
  4. ↑ "Dr. Rapaille's Biography - Archetype Discoveries Worldwide". Archived from the original on 2015-05-30. Retrieved 2015-05-21.
  5. ↑ Hartley, Tom (2000-05-08). "Cruisin' for the right look".
  6. ↑ "The Culture Code, by Clotaire Rapaille". 15 July 2006. Archived from the original on 15 July 2006.
  7. ↑ Patton, Phil (2002-03-18). "Car Shrinks Forget rear-seat legroom. Automakers have decided that the key to higher sales lies in meeting your deepest emotional needs. Here come the". CNN.
  8. ↑ Whitby, Bob (14 September 2000). "Getting Sleeeepy…". Archived from the original on January 18, 2013.
  9. ↑ "Learn About ADW". Archived from the original on 2010-01-29. Retrieved 2010-07-16.
  10. ↑ "Crack This Code". 1 April 2006.
  11. ↑ Wells, Melanie (2003-01-09). "Mind Games". Forbes.
  12. ↑ Rapaille, Clotaire (2007). Culture Code. Broadway. ISBN   978-0-76-792057-5.
  13. 1 2 Holt, Douglas; Cameron, Douglas (2010). Cultural Strategy. Oxford University Press. ISBN   978-0-19-958740-7.
  14. ↑ G. Clotaire Rapaille, 7 Secrets of Marketing, 9.
  15. ↑ "Promenade Speakers Bureau LLC - Clotaire Rapaille - Archetype Speaker, Author of Culture Code". Archived from the original on 2011-07-15. Retrieved 2010-06-09.
  16. 1 2 "The Reptilian brain always wins in the marketplace". 10 August 2000.
  17. ↑ Rapaille. "Marketing to the Reptilian Brain." Forbes 03 July 2006: 44. Business Source Premier. EBSCO. Web. 15 June 2010.
  18. ↑ "The Persuaders". PBS .
  19. ↑ Rapaille, Clotaire (1 February 2001). 7 Secrets of Marketing in a Multi-Cultural World . Executive Excellence Publishing. ISBN   978-1890009748.
  20. ↑ . ISBN   978-0974016825.{{cite book}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
  21. ↑ "Archetype Discoveries Worldwide". Archived from the original on 2013-06-02. Retrieved 2013-02-13.
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