Dissertation Oral Defenses
Since its beginnings, the phenomenon of consciousness has been immersed in the ocean of the unconscious, which is reflected in a psychic existence that is experienced throughout and beyond the physical world. The creative impulse was thus born, as a desire to emulate the living creation and its perpetual shapeshifting, resulting in the emergence of…
Mythologies of place reveal our beliefs about Nature, self and Other. In this time of pandemic and climate change, the imperative to recognize the power of Nature grows daily. To respect Nature’s agency, we need to deconstruct the structures of meaning we impose upon it. The legend of the lover’s leap—the fabricated story of an…
Transference Issues in the Treatment of Mexican American Women Who Were Sexually Abused in Childhood
This study explores the effect on therapy of positive and negative transferences experienced by Mexican American women during treatment to address their childhood sexual abuse. Individual interviews were conducted with six Mexican American women, all of whom received treatment for childhood sexual abuse. The resulting qualitative data was examined using interpretive phenomenological analysis. Positive transference…
A cultural complex assesses the heritable trait of high sensitivity in negative terms, leading those who identify as highly sensitive persons with a sense of shame and guilt. This study reviews current research on the trait as it exists and furthers an examination of it with a focus on high sensitivity’s manifestations in psyche’s other…
This qualitative study focused on the journey women undergo moving from normative body discontent, which is a term that describes the common state of suffering around food and body that many women in America experience, to making peace with the body. This experience with the body is subclinical and so culturally normative that it is…
The literature on the Latina’s individual experience recovery of mental illness is lacking. The study utilized Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (Smith, Flowers, & Larkin, 2009), to illuminate the lived experience of Latinas who have had major depression. The results of this study are categorized in three themes: the Latina’s experience of mental illness, healthcare landscape, and…
The ecological unconscious was articulated as primary to ecopsychology originally by Theodore Roszak; yet understanding how its contents and psychodynamics inform human approaches of relating to habitat has not been a central concern within the field. Confronting this complexity of ecopsychology, this study is an inquiry into a diverse selection of written texts that express…
This hermeneutic study traces the developmental theory that emerges from Erich Neumann’s writings. The research revisions reevaluates and consolidates the emerging theory, in the hope of reviving interest in Neumann’s writings, and to indicate his importance as a Jungian theoretician. This dissertation shows that Neumann’s archetypal developmental relational and metapsychological theory, which effectively supplements Jung’s…
This study described how participants came to terms with existential boredom in the course of their lived experiences of alcoholism and recovery. A review of the literature revealed a paucity of qualitative studies in the context of boredom and alcohol recovery. To that end, this was a qualitative study designed to contribute to the existing…
In California, more than two-million students annually enroll in a community college to achieve a specific goal. Historically, completion rates for these students show that less than half will achieve their intended goal within six years from the day they begin attending classes. The combination of reasons for not completing the transformational journey of academic…
Friedrich Nietzsche was as much a guide for C. G. Jung through the underworld of the unconscious as Virgil was for Dante. With the publication of Jung’s The Red Book and its notable parallels to, and even inspiration from, Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra, a new survey of the psyche opens. Both Jung and Nietzsche detailed…
This dissertation argues that stories co-create culture and gird cultural mythology, the storied spell cast over groups to enable cooperation: the superpower of humanity. The current mythological foundation is casting a curse of division that harms everyone, individually and communally, regardless of gender, as each person requires the gifts of both the archetypal masculine and…
The purpose of this research was to examine available texts to discover the African American, former slave Sojourner Truth’s prophetic voice in depth psychology. A hermeneutic approach to the categories of Sojourner Truth’s religious dimension of the psyche, Sojourner Truth and individuation, and aligning Sojourner Truth with depth psychology were used in this qualitative study.…
The contemporary Southern California cityscape is characterized by urban sprawl, an ever-expanding and homogenized pattern of development where one subdivision looks just like the next and where suburban strip malls are surrounded by seas of asphalt parking lots. Complicating matters, (over)regulated standards for form, function, and uniformity lack respect for the landscape’s genius loci, or…
Upon separation from service, many military veterans experience high levels of stress as they lose their connection to the tightly bonded, and intentionally collective, military culture. This psychological stress may manifest in symptoms leading to diagnoses of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, or anxiety, and often includes comorbid somatic symptoms, such as chronic pain. This…
The progressive escalation in military suicides, along with a substantial increase in posttraumatic stress diagnosis among active military personnel and veterans, has become a significant humanitarian, societal, and cultural concern. Such a defining moment illuminates the need for timely and innovative treatment approaches for combat-related posttraumatic stress. This research explored depth psychological practices within short-term,…
In this dissertation I bring into conversation the different understandings of the origin of religion put forward by Jane Harrison in her Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, with those of foundational figures in the simultaneously emerging field of depth psychology: Sigmund Freud and C. G. Jung. Harrison and depth psychologists sought not only…
Adolescents are sent to therapeutic boarding school as an intervention for various behaviors that illicit concern from parents with the primary focus being removal from their immediate environment and forced to comply to new rules and expectations to correct behavior. Using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis, the experiences of six women were explored to understand the psychological…
The human/dog bond extends from prehistoric times up to the present, shaped by myriad spheres and an intwined destiny. This work utilizes three disciplines, comparative mythology, psychology, and dog ethology, to explore aspects of this bond. In addition, this study considers how dog archetypal images of guide, guard, and healer inform the human/dog bond within…
For millennia, women who experienced infertility or couples unable to carry a pregnancy to term were denied genetic parenthood. Recent 20th century advances in medical and reproductive technologies, the creation of in-vitro fertilization, and gestational surrogacy have provided infertile women, men, and their partners the once unfathomable ability to parent children born of their own…
