Dissertation Oral Defenses


Candidate: Alexandra Candler Trippe Date: August 18, 2020 Time:

This hermeneutic study brings spellcraft and depth psychology’s work with alchemy into conversation. The research explores the role of imagination, the four elements, animism, synchronicity, and ritual in both depth psychology’s work with alchemy and the practice of spellcraft. The field of Jungian psychology’s work with alchemy has been limited by its lack of physical…


Candidate: Dawn Michelle Berry Date: August 17, 2020 Time:

This study suggested that military wives live in a transcultural state between U.S. military culture and American civilian culture and investigated whether this transcultural state of being is conducive to the individuation process by utilizing Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) to explore the experience of being a military wife. The analysis of semi-structured interviews with five…


Candidate: by Yuria Bartolomé Date: August 14, 2020 Time:

This dissertation inquires into the experience of self-transcendence that results in compassionate living. This awareness engenders a sense of belonging, a cosmological vision in a social narrative in which individuals are members of the community and become caretakers of the ecosystem. I suggest this ethos bridges religion and science, leading to an integrated psychological experience…


Candidate: Rosalie Nell Bouck Date: August 7, 2020 Time:

Cultivation and worship of maize as plant and symbol is one of the most consistent cornerstones of Pre-Columbian Mesoamerican cultures. This dissertation works across genres and eras to track the social and philosophical implications of this sacred plant, asking what the narratives and rituals around corn can teach us about the evolution of Mesoamerican culture…


Candidate: JoAnne Michelle Foist Date: August 4, 2020 Time:

This dissertation focuses on the impact of bringing embodiment to business professionals. The intention of this work was to produce a phenomenological description, through a somatic depth psychological lens, of business professionals’ experiences relating to embodiment and individuation while practicing Kundalini Yoga. This was done through workday yogic practices and after-work Kundalini Yoga classes conducted…


Candidate: Kim Ludmila Grynick Date: August 3, 2020 Time:

This autoethnographic inquiry explores the personal passage of adolescent eating disorder onset, recovery, and eventual emergence into a clinician, critiquing the collective neurosis of body objectification, fear of the feminine, and a separation from nature. This study argues that maltreatment of one’s personal body in eating disorders is a cultural complex that parallels modernity’s exploitation…


Candidate: Sandra Luz del Castillo Date: July 28, 2020 Time: 11:00 am

This hermeneutic inquiry explores the Mexican Day of the Dead using a close reading/active imagination methodology with a depth psychological perspective. It addresses the question, how an imaginal approach to death can deepen our understanding, and help bring meaning to our last, and most profound rite of passage. To explore this tradition venerating the dead,…


Candidate: Jennifer Degnan Smith Date: July 23, 2020 Time: 9:00 am

A hermeneutic exploration, through an archetypal-mythopoetic lens, of cultural complexes in the Greek economic crisis reveals a Greek hero fighting for freedom against the tyrannies of oppressive foreign lenders, an ineffective government, and a broken global financial system. Economists and sociologists have also identified idiosyncrasies within the Greek culture, which may have contributed to the…


Candidate: Elise Marie Hebert Date: July 16, 2020 Time: 10:00 am

This qualitative, textual hermeneutic study explores what influences female sexual desire inside of a heterosexual marriage via an archetypal approach to the Apollo and Daphne myth. The methodology includes Hillman’s psychologizing process and imaginal dialogues with the mythic figures. Both Ovid’s version of the myth and Bernini’s statue of the mythic pair serve as an…


Candidate: Heather Hazen Hathaway Date: July 14, 2020 Time: 11:00 am

Society labels boys who play destructively as bad, deviant, oppositional, or antisocial, causing parents to feel something is wrong with their child. This study shows that boys acting out destructively, dismembering inanimate objects, tearing up their rooms, and decapitating toys are not naughty or “bad” but, instead, are searching for relief in their struggle with…


Candidate: Barbara Bain Date: July 7, 2020 Time: 12:00 pm

Dreams and Identity in Indigenous California was a qualitative, narrative inquiry that utilized a Red Pedagogical, transmodern philosophical approach to research on dreaming and its influence on a sense of Indigenous identity among self-identifying Indigenous people in the state of California. Using Story Science as a research approach and methodology, data were gathered on the…


Candidate: James Neville Kennard Date: July 6, 2020 Time: 4:00 pm

This hermeneutic study explores the esoteric context and complementary ritual discourse of Medieval Haṭha-Yoga and Hindu alchemy, from a Jungian depth psychological perspective. Its comparative approach draws on the essential values, fantasy images, and key concepts of esotericism, to describe a deeper web of relationship within culturally diverse traditions of alchemy. The Tantric vision of…


Candidate: Chih-An Tang Date: June 30, 2020 Time: 9:00 am

This research takes a hermeneutic approach to the interpretation of the published case reports of sandplay therapy, with a special attention placed upon the photographic images of the first and the final sand pictures. As the interest is in the final sandplay, this study enters into the hermeneutic cycle from the final sandplay scene. The…


Candidate: Jan Francis Sears Date: June 24, 2020 Time: 1:00 pm

Case study methodology and a personal experience narrative analysis (PENA) frame this exploration of the therapeutic use of portrait photography from a Jungian perspective. Underlying theory is examined regarding the psychological use of photographs, the distinction between empathy and compassion in mirroring and witnessing, the therapeutic benefits of storytelling, and the feminine function of the…


Candidate: Diana Richelle North Date: June 22, 2020 Time: 1:00 pm

Epic Explorations in Opera-The Hero’s Overture, is an original inquiry into the mythic patterns found in stories as they relate to six operas in this analysis. Mozart’s The Magic Flute and Don Giovanni, Rossini’s The Barber of Seville, Offenbach’s The Tales of Hoffman, Gounod’s Faust and Strauss’s The Woman Without a Shadow are analyzed through…


Candidate: Stacy Brooks Date: June 17, 2020 Time: 11:00 am

Generations of Cherokee children learned how to live in the Appalachian Mountains through a system of myths and sacred formulas, many documented in the works of James Mooney, Myths of the Cherokees, and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees. Factual information embedded within these myths and formulas have a basis of factual information regarding observable behavior,…


Candidate: Barbara Anne Morse Date: June 16, 2020 Time: 11:00 am

This alchemical hermeneutic study examines the problem of the myth of separation between spirit and matter that lies at the wounded heart of the Western psyche. The myth of separation is conceptualized as a traumatic, intergenerational attachment wound that creates the perception of dissociation of the divine spirit from the material world. Diverse problems confronting…


Candidate: Melinda Nettifee Date: June 15, 2020 Time: 12:00 pm

Something significant is lost when verbalization is defined as an act of cognition or mental insight, separate from or in opposition to the “felt-sense.” This research challenges this dualism by framing and investigating voice as an embodied sense. The fields of trauma theory and trauma healing practice are addressed as sites where the harm of…


Candidate: Michael James Quill Date: June 11, 2020 Time: 4:00 pm

This practice-led, creative, and heuristic dissertation tracks the evolution of a depth psychologist from volunteer to program director at a nonprofit environmental organization. The research follows a life-changing, near-death experience that steered the author into a psychological and physical reconnective process with water, which included participation in ocean restoration programs, graduate studies in community, liberation,…


Candidate: Swanhilda R. Ochoa Date: June 5, 2020 Time: 1:00 pm

Honoring the need to feel heard when growing up in the foster care system is the main foundation of this research. This study explores how to understand, from a depth psychological perspective, the child in foster care’s trauma. Data has been gathered by utilizing hermeneutic, phenomenological, and alchemical hermeneutics approaches, providing an analysis of the…