Dissertation Oral Defenses
The Alice Griffith community is embedded in an unresolved historical relationship with systemic racism. After decades of deliberate marginalization in San Francisco and centuries of systemic violence in the United States, to correctly address the alienation and the psychiatric implications of serial forced displacement community-led initiatives, grounded in professional support that center dialogue, participatory citizenship,…
This study explores, develops, describes and engages with the concept of archaic pilgrimage as it is mythopoetically enacted in W. G. Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn (1998). This text is mined for the archetypal aspects of trauma as it surfaces within melancholy. Particular attention is given to the way memory engages us with history, facilitating…
Adopting a phenomenological approach within an ecopsychological setting, this study delved into participants’ experiences of agency in equine-assisted counseling (EAC). Audiovisually recorded experiences and testimonies of 27 participants were examined. The findings confirm that agency is embodied: All agentic processes, including deliberate choosing and acting, encompass somatic responses or bodily wisdom. Moreover, this research has…
This research focuses on the parallels between the Underworld journey of Persephone, from the Greek text the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, and the journey through the Underworld of sexual assault, with its own path of return and recovery. This project highlights the mission of The Grateful Garments Project and local sexual assault response teams (SART)…
A transformation in O is Wilfred Bion’s most esoteric concept. O stretches contemporary psychoanalytic thought out of object relations and into the numinous. Much has been written in attempts to understand O, and to understand Bion’s shift into what some consider to be more mystical realms. Pages have been written regarding the philosophical origins of…
This inquiry is a cultural and historical hermeneutic that maps classical Jungian anima/animus theory over the lives and work of selected female Surrealist artists and writers. The goal is to see how this data might expand or reconfigure the concept of Individuation as Jung describes it. Enriching this study is special attention paid to the…
The purpose of this research is to explore archetypal themes underlying alcoholism in women. Using a case study method, it explores the effectiveness of sandplay therapy for women by asking the question: how does the presence of symbols of feminine shadow contribute to the emergent transformation process in sandplay for women with addictive disorders? After…
A qualitative, phenomenological study investigates how unresolved effects of combat trauma in American fathers who served in the Vietnam War manifest in their descendant children. Discernible effects on psychological development and general outlook in life were observed for seven participants, resulting from dysfunctional parenting, indirect trauma, and shared unconscious imagery. Findings are consistent with previous…
Masculinity has been in a state of disruption over the past 50 years. From the second-wave feminist movement of the 1960s to the #MeToo movement at present, the traditional framework of what masculinity has looked like no longer seems appropriate. Thus, men and women may benefit from a re-visioned model of masculinity that clearly separates…
The conceptual split between nature and culture has become a foundational part of how modern western culture relates to its world, shaping not only taxonomy and perception, but also the very physical design of modern life. That split has exerted a subtle but important influence on both traditional depth psychology and its modern offspring, ecopsychology,…
This study offers an original contribution to the field of clinical psychology by integrating the theory of the nonsensuous psyche with the practice of psychotherapy. The concept of the nonsensuous psyche was developed in relation to psychoanalysis by Wilfred R. Bion, who built from a philosophical tradition stemming from Plato to Immanuel Kant and the…
There are many times throughout a woman’s life when it is necessary to stand in her own unique way. The ability to listen to her own voice and not be influenced by family, friends, institutions, or by society is what Carl Jung theorized as the individuation process. This dissertation explores the lived experiences of women,…
Alcoholism is a devastating disease that can affect generations of family systems unless the pattern is stopped. Research indicates that when children are raised by an alcoholic parent they unconsciously adopt their addictive patterns and form distinct behavioral roles to combat the dysfunction. Because these roles are tied to survival within the system, they often…
The continual rise in adolescent suicide rates is astonishing in an era where awareness and prevention programs are prevalent and help readily available. Families, therapists, and researchers struggle to understand why a young person would end their life before it has barely begun. Hillman believed that “to understand a suicide we need to know what…
Romantic love conjures thoughts and ideas about blissful harmony, yet sometimes brings heartache. Individual conceptualizations and expectations of love and relationships, although subjective, often do not coincide with the reality of romantic love. This disconnect causes heartache and disappointment as love reaches an impossible point. Utilizing Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (Smith, Flowers, & Larkin, 2009), this…
This dissertation identified affective themes and the inner voices of retired Black National Football League (NFL) players by following the dialectics of psychological processes using a relational and voice-centered approach (Gilligan & Eddy, 2017) in order to glean the nuances found within the margins of communication. Depth psychological and critical race theories provided a foundation…
Rooted in the depth tradition of Jungian and Archetypal Psychology, this creative study witnessed the perspective of Other in the midst of widescale panic and anxiety about the state of the world as an act of soul-tending. Answering Jung’s and Hillman’s call to follow images for deeper insight of psychological meaning, this research honored the…
Throughout the history of psychoanalysis, theorists and clinicians have offered theories and treatment recommendations for treatment of schizophrenia, but a comprehensive review of the literature aimed at integrating these works has not been conducted. The author reviews salient works on theory and treatment of schizophrenia within psychoanalytic literature and offers a comprehensive model of schizophrenic…
The ego-Self encounter is a crucial construct in Jungian psychology. Jung wrote of the confrontational nature of this encounter, proposing that if the ego can endure the clash, it will eventually experience the inevitable initial defeat as a victory in which the personality is enlarged and matured. If the ego is not strong and flexible…
The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between domestic violence and the warrior archetype in heterosexual men. I achieved this objective through examining mythological and depth psychological influences on behavior. Utilizing Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (IPA), I focused specific attention to masculinity and femininity, and how learned gender roles influenced the activation of…
