Dissertation Oral Defenses
This depth psychological exploration of life events as stories of the soul restores the soul‘s method of knowing and fosters a new relationship with the psyche. It utilizes a hybrid methodology combining hermeneutics and alchemical hermeneutics with autoethnography to explore the soul’s unfinished business in the personal, ancestral, and cultural psyche. The dissertation gathers multiple…
American canonical writer Ernest Hemingway created fictional portrayals of war and masculine themes. His lifelong battle with depression and family history of suicide has led to a fascination with the author’s personal life. This inherited psychological legacy could be considered a curse. However, this study suggests that the curse can be understood as the cultural…
Depth psychology holds that the individual’s inner images are potent mediums of knowing and experiencing. Manifest with their own spontaneity, affective qualities, and temporality, inner images bridge the connection between the internal and external worlds of experiencing and being. Explored papers in depth psychology, somatics, phenomenology, and expressive arts therapy, reflect the interrelationship and interconnection…
The purpose of this study was to explore and understand the clinical relevance of ancient Mesoamerican healing practices with the overall aim of creating a hybrid model of psychotherapy. This study utilized Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) to interview three Toltec healing practitioners about their lived experiences, including their perspectives on healing, illness, spirituality, and psychological…
Despite the abundance of research that has been done on the cosmic, philosopher- musician Sun Ra there has not yet been a full study attending to the primacy of mythology in his life, thought, and music. This dissertation explores this mythic aspect and the multifarious stories that Ra told, as woven into the kaleidoscopic body…
Research indicates an association between trauma and the perpetration of crime. Many incarcerated people have experienced trauma at some point in their lifetime, prior to incarceration. Yoga therapy is an integrative healthcare practice found to be effective in treating the effects of trauma while improving interoceptive awareness and overall well-being. Although studies on long-term yoga…
In popular culture, the hero’s journey is often considered to be a journey of adventure and exploration. But on a deeper, depth psychological level, it is an inward journey to higher levels of consciousness and individuation. A Vajrayana Buddhist sacred biography, Lady of the Lotus Born: The Life and Enlightenment of Yeshe Tsogyal, provides such…
Although meditation is a contemplative practice that can engender individuation, spirituality, and enlightenment, it also lowers the threshold to the unconscious and allows unconscious contents to enter consciousness. With the lowering of the threshold to the unconscious, there is the potential to encounter the demons of the unknown, hidden or shadow aspects of ourselves. Through…
This dissertation explores how assumptions about reality and the super natural can affect the ways in which both experiencers and non-experiencers approach the paranormal and super natural. Using written accounts of paranormal encounters at specific locations, this dissertation unpacks how time, location, and culture can influence how a person may or may not experience the…
This inquiry, using a narrative methodology, depicts the embodied experience of five women who handle and ride horses (horsewomen) through narrative and cameo vignettes. Embodiment is understood as the totality of the experience: sensations occurring in the structure of the body, energies flowing in and around the body, and images that arise in the mind.…
This dissertation examines the problem of substance addiction from a depth psychological perspective. It explores how sustainable recovery can be initiated in the treatment of substance addiction through the excavation of soul as a vehicle for healing trauma, loss of meaning, and connection with spirit. Using hermeneutic methodology, the study examines the conundrum of a…
Research has shown that writing personal stories or memoir has psychological impact on the individual author and may guide them on a path to healing through the process of crafting and reimagining their story. This study used Clark Moustakas’s qualitative heuristic methodology to analyze the co-researcher’s experiential data that was gathered through interview, the study…
This study reviews the psychoanalytic theory of anality, a pillar of Freud’s psychosexual theory of human development, and subsequent developments by psychoanalytic clinicians throughout the 20th century, focusing on the metaphysical assumptions underlying theory and practice. Freud encountered anal phenomena in the clinical hour in the free associations of his clients and their syntonic symptomology,…
This human science study utilized a hermeneutic methodology to explore place and people’s relationship to place from a multi-disciplinary perspective. Texts from the field of psychology, including environmental psychology, ecopsychology, attachment theory, and social psychology, were analyzed. Then, texts from phenomenological philosophy, phenomenological psychology, and ecologically attuned phenomenology were analyzed. The subsequent analysis resulted in…
The current body of cannabis literature is predominately rooted in the Western medical model and based in ideas of pathology and medicalization. A negative bias permeates the literature and use that falls outside the bounds of Western medicine remains poorly understood, yet some emerging and qualitative research suggests that there are reasons for use and…
This qualitative, phenomenological study explores the lived experiences of fire department union leaders who were invited to share their perspectives on the value of using ketamine-assisted psychotherapy (KAP) for firefighters diagnosed with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Currently, the occurrence of PTSD and depression among firefighters is nearly five times higher than the civilian population. KAP…
This production style dissertation includes the exploration of the relationship between women’s erotic imagination and their individuation journey through living inquiry, a practitioner-based research method marked by the creation of 20 original works of art. Bolstered by the philosophical underpinnings of a Jungian arts-based research (JABR) methodology, the artist–researcher approaches archetypal images of her erotic…
Although the Jungian concept of cultural complexes added an essential layer to the understanding of the unconscious, research regarding how cultural complexes contribute to psychological suffering is still lacking. It is crucial to explore how the individual psyche is influenced by the group psyche in order to break crystalized worldview assumptions and improve clinical practice.…
The study used narrative inquiry to understand generational war and the history of Genocide in Armenia. The intention is to bring awareness to the world regarding the challenges and the chaos that one nation is experiencing and the trauma that they endured while the Armenian Genocide received little attention in the media. Narrative interviewing was…
This Jungian Arts-Based Research (ABR) dissertation explores women’s sexual sovereignty through the creation of artistic work that enters into creative conversation with the mythology of the Mórrígan, an Irish sovereignty goddess. The creative work produced includes an experiential workshop format exploring the story of Macha (a figure of the Mórrígan), example images and interpretations from…
