Dissertation Oral Defenses
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…
While the emergence of gay marriage has been studied phenomenologically, the level of self-acceptance by gay men institutionalizing their relationships in this way has yet to be fully explored. This study continues the Jungian tradition of searching for archetypal patterns, but within the lived experiences of gay, married men—specifically, patterns in their lived experiences of…
Discovering one’s myth may be difficult for both depth psychotherapists and clients unfamiliar with ancient world cultures, the source depth psychology has traditionally turned to for archetypal patterns. Contemporary lived mythologies are emerging to widen and expand the mythic lens of depth psychology, answer life’s truths and basic questions, and gain insight into one’s inner…
The purpose of this thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006, 2013) dissertation was to explore the process by which activist artists engaged the community of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina through art projects. Methods of inquiry included phenomenological reflection on data elicited by investigation of activist artists’ experiences in relation to these art projects. The…
The intention of this study is to examine the last tale of Sufi master Jalal e din Rumi in his masterpiece Mathnavi (Rumi, 2003). Sufism is one of the world’s established mystical traditions and the Sufi Order is a school that offers training for initiates. Storytelling is an integral and important tradition within Sufism, fomenting…
This dissertation is an imaginal inquiry into the spirit of waiting. The research focuses on the inner life of the psyche of waiting in relation to the liminal, creative, and active imaginal fields. Informed through the spirit and the sacred, the author considers the lived experience of waiting a paradox, where one is existing and…
Today’s public conversation around prostitution forces people who work in the sex industry to identify as either powerless passive victims of sexual slavery with no agency or lifeworld of their own; or as empowered sex workers who enjoy their labor. I argue that sex workers’ life histories offer a counter-text and a voice of resistance…
The literature on new mothers speaks to the common experiences of women, including their personal reflections and interpersonal patterns as well as the collective influence of society on the experience of motherhood (Besser & Priel, 2001, 2003; Churchill & Davis, 2010; Coo, Milgrom, & Trinder, 2014). It suggests that surviving the vulnerability of motherhood is…
This study is intended to contribute to a metaphorical understanding of how world soul, or Anima Mundi, is imagined, embodied, and communicated at the intersection of the visible and invisible interrelationships among humans and animated nature. This hermeneutic exploration has implications for relationship with imaginal dimensions and presences as well as a reciprocally transformative relationship…
As depth psychologists believe, regardless of the therapist’s theoretical orientation or the intervention employed, it is the therapeutic relationship itself that is responsible for change. Jungian analysts believe specifically that this process of transformation occurs for both the client and the therapist. This dissertation explores the notion that destiny is involved in the formation of…
Restricted by the dogma of many forms of Western religion and plagued by the spiritual emptiness of materialism pervading the current age, many seek direct, personal experience of the sacred. Following a hermeneutic methodology, this dissertation explores the relevance of the writings of Jung and others on synchronicity, as both phenomenon and principle, as a…
There are innumerable causes of today’s environmental crises, but at the root of many of them lie bad stories. These destructive modern myths create the kind of intellectual separation between humanity and the natural world which can end up justifying the worst of environmental excesses, and—unlike concrete, scientific problems with empirical ecological solutions—this separation cannot…
This phenomenological hermeneutic dissertation explores what it means to honor the feminine as a path to the conscious masculine and a direct experience of inner marriage. This study identifies characteristics and dynamics of the feminine and masculine aspects of our inner selves and the creative interplay between them, demonstrating how honoring the feminine in daily…
Drawing on the theories of complexes, symbols, and the transcendent function, as set forth by C. G. Jung, and cultural complex theory, as developed by Singer and Kimbles, this dissertation seeks to understand the psychological dynamics of division and healing between the Unionists and the Republicans in Northern Ireland. The study undertakes a depth psychological…
Robin Blaser describes “the foreignness, the outsideness, as a kind of metaphor for the sense…of the process that leads to a poem.” It is, he says, “akin to a translation, a word which in its parts holds the meaning of the word metaphor, the bringing over.” This dissertation expands on that notion of poetic process…
In spite of recent trends that have positively impacted gay men, the United States continues to be permeated by homophobia. This phenomenon often manifests in young gay men as internalized homophobia, which in turn can lead to psychological and physiological symptoms, including engaging in sexual practices that place them at risk for contracting human immunodeficiency…
