Dissertation Oral Defenses
Ever since the Enlightenment, the educated classes of Western civilization have experienced an increasingly unbridgeable gulf between faith in a transcendent spiritual reality and faith in natural science. The source of the divide appears to spring from our internal experience as knowing subjects influencing, or being influenced by, external objects and events. Various metaphysical solutions…
This hermeneutic research uses a depth psychological perspective to evaluate four texts that describe approaches to working with the phenomena of hoarding and with persons who hoard. The texts are similar in that they reject use of the shame-inducing word hoarder. Although they avoid explicitly addressing the causes of hoarding, each text considers the role…
This study adds to the postmodern Jungian canon of literary studies through a hermeneutic examination of Toni Wolff’s (1951/1956) essay, “Structural Forms of the Feminine Psyche,” using an interdisciplinary methodology that includes close reading from literary theory studies and Jungian literary analysis. Wolff’s material has been limited to woman’s psychology rather than seen as an…
This research explores the intersection of mass incarceration, ecopedagogies, and liberation pedagogy. A gardening and food skills course, using liberation pedagogy and ecopedagogies for curriculum design, was implemented at a transitional home for recently incarcerated men. The study sought to understand the impact of the curriculum on participants using a qualitative research approach. Narrative data…
More than any of his other archetypal forms, C. G. Jung’s conception of the shadow has found a permanent place within popular culture. But whether it manifests bodily as a shadow-figure or permeates the conscious world in the form of a shadow-realm, the Jungian shadow is presumed to be a negative and even sinister archetypal…
This study involves Jewish survivors of the Sho’ah, the attempted extinction of the Jews during the Holocaust. Significant research has been conducted on the Holocaust; however, the research on one’s experiences of trauma and storytelling, one’s ability to tell their story, and the experience of being heard while doing so, is an understudied subject. This…
C. G. Jung never published his painted opus, The Red Book, or the art-based methodology that he learned in creating it, instead teaching this process to his advanced patients in analysis. Yet, “despite the fact” that he “so often travelled this path with individual patients,” Jung (1933) lamented that he had not “succeeded in making…
The purpose of this study is to historically analyze the history of the industrial food system and the impact on the image of the keeper of the hearth from a Depth Ecopsychological perspective. It will start with a critical analysis of the history of the industrial food system, exploring the changes it made on western…
Perinatal mood and anxiety disorders (PMADs) are a common occurrence for women from the time of conception throughout the first year of their children’s lives. However, often this disorder goes undetected and mothers’ do not seek treatment, citing the existence of many systemic barriers that both prevent and deter them from reaching out for help…
Many clinicians have referred to narcissists as among those difficult to treat for a variety of complex reasons. Simultaneously, individuals with a harsh inner critic can also have difficulty in treatment as they work to silence or accept the existence of such an inner judgmental voice. Shame affects both narcissists and individuals who experience inner…
In 1614, Count Palatine Michael Maier published Arcana Arcanissima, the Most Secret Mysteries in which he analyzes mythological stories through an alchemical lens to discover the Christian truths which they hold. This text is referenced throughout scholarship on Maier, but no one has translated it into English. Maier is famous for works such as the…
Grounded in the psychology of C. G. Jung and James Hillman, this dissertation looks to classical Greek mythology in order to explore how the descents and ascents in underworld journeys personify archetypal styles of experiencing the unconscious. In psychological terms, the descent and ascent motif is a metaphor for ego-consciousness contacting the unconscious. Put more…
West African immigrants are the largest group of African immigrants in the United States. However, there has not been much research focusing on this increasingly growing group of immigrants. The purpose of this qualitative interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) research was to explore acculturation related mental health stressors among recent West African Immigrants in Southern California.…
This dissertation discuses the connection and similarities between fairy tales and textile creation. Specifically discussed are the fairytales that involve textile creation. These tales are: Rumpelstiltskin, Sleeping Beauty, “Habetrot and Scantlie Mab,” “The Little Flax Flower,” and “The Three Spindles.” These tales all involve an element of textile creation that is integral to the story.…
This study investigates if and how creation myths illuminate the creative process. Framing the inquiry is Jan Vansina’s image of a floating gap between mythic times of ancientness and recentness. Ancientness contains magical stories of origins, and recentness contains narrative more closely resembling day-to-day reality. Between the two lies a floating gap, or a mythic…
This depth psychological study explored the interplay of Artemis, who is the Greek goddess of the wilderness and the hunt, the archetypal Wild Feminine, and ecofeminism, as well as their potential contributions to women’s individuation journeys. Comprising the dynamic components in this framework of an animated world ontology were depth psychology, mythology, ecofeminism, eco-phenomenology, and…
This research asks what the experience of being a Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) is like. What are the challenges and what are the rewards? A series of questions were asked of 14 CASA volunteers in order to obtain data from which emergent themes of the CASA experience for the group as a whole were…
The purpose of this depth psychological study is to explore storytelling processes, focusing on the video game narrative format, assessing implications for how meaning is being shaped in this contemporary medium. Narrative emerges from and bridges the conscious and unconscious, inner and outer, virtual and real, and individual and collective. Narrative generates meaning, which draws…
his qualitative research study employed interpretive phenomenological analysis (IPA) to better understand and explore the lived experience of clients during animal-assisted therapy (AAT) and what makes AAT an effective therapeutic intervention. In particular, the meaning clients assigned to the animals present was focused upon as a potential healing agent. The self-reporting of six clients was…
This study investigates the experiences of five wealthy individuals in the United States who gave more than $1 million toward alleviating global poverty. This research uses the lens of depth psychology to understand the deeper meaning and significance of such giving in their lives. Using the qualitative research methodology of portraiture to record and interpret…
