Dissertation Oral Defenses

This study explores how the mother, orphan, and abandoned child archetypes interact within the psyches of individuals who have lived in Armenian orphanages. The orphanage as a container or community consists of children who either have lost one or both parents through death or are left behind by one or both parents who do not…

John Milton’s Paradise Lost established his legacy as one of the greatest English poets, yet labeling him simply as a Protestant or Puritan limits the scope of his work. His writing embodies an activist mysticism that resists the restrictive doctrines of the Church of England and institutionalized religion more generally. Milton’s vision champions freedom of…

The purpose of this study was to explore the implications, consequences, and benefits of the importation of sacred indigenous practices into Western centric societies. This objective was achieved through utilizing Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) to examine the Westernization of shamanism and the romanticization of Indigenous culture by Westerners. I gave specific attention to both supportive…

This study explored the various meanings of so-called sexual acting out behaviors by interviewing eight individuals, including three women, ranging from age 30 to 40, and five clinicians. The study also questioned whether some sexual acting out behaviors can be considered forms of self-harm for young women. The interviews provided insight into these women’s sexual…

This alchemical hermeneutic dissertation presents a depth psychological exploration of the witch as a complete archetype. Archetypes are integral to the Jungian process of individuation, the circular growth of the soul back toward the Self. Current Jungian female archetypes insufficiently honor feminine power and fail to provide a model of reciprocal relatedness between Eros and…

In contemporary American society the experience of becoming a mother, mothering children, and navigating the experience and institution of motherhood has a significant impact on women, often resulting in the deterioration of maternal mental health and the rise of maternal burnout. The aim of this study was to examine maternal burnout within the context of…

This hermeneutic study reviewed literature in a multitude of disciplines in an effort to surface a millennial darkness practice that culturally oriented the hunter-gatherer cultures of the Paleolithic and Near East Early Neolithic. This mode of praxis was pursued by dedicated practitioners over a period of some 20,000 years, first in Paleolithic caves and later…

The purpose of this qualitative, hermeneutic dissertation and depth psychological inquiry is to explore the relationship between the idea of the lumen naturae, the light of nature, and the sacred feminine within selected literature by the 16th century Swiss alchemist and doctor, Paracelsus, and the 19th and 20th century Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Gustav Jung. The…

This hermeneutic research envisions an archetypal therapy for issues of guilt and justice as they appear in marital counseling. It will consider as a mythic background for guilt in marital counseling the trial of Orestes as it is dramatized in Aeschylus’s The Eumenides, a trial arranged by the goddess Athena to adjudicate the competing claims…

This depth psychologically oriented study utilized interpretive phenomenological analysis (IPA) to explore covert aggression and abuse of power by women in the workplace in the United States. The research sought to understand if gender stereotypes might obscure female-to-female abuse in the workplace, identify social factors that might exacerbate such hostility, explore individual and interpersonal factors…

Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) is a global crisis, impacting up to 20.1% of mothers during pregnancy (Gazmararian et al., 1996), and it has clinical and social implications for women, children, families, and communities (Cook & Bewley, 2008). Experiencing IPV while pregnant can negatively influence the foundational mechanisms of human emotional relationships (Levendosky, Bogat, & Huth-Bocks,…

Arts-based research is an emergent research paradigm that utilizes poiesis, or knowledge making through creating, as a core feature. Arts-based research is not a centralized or standardized paradigm but instead has multiple, fluid epistemologies and methodologies, which can pose challenges for arts-based researchers to be taken seriously in positivist-dominated academic institutions. This research engages in…

According to James Sire, a worldview is based on a set of presuppositions about the nature of the world, the universe, and our place in it. C. G. Jung and physicist David Bohm both argued that one of the primary problems facing individuals today arises from the mechanistic, materialistic worldview currently permeating the collective in…

In this study, the potential spiritual dimensions of underground disco are hermeneutically examined, compared, and contrasted with the philosophies and spiritual techniques of alchemy, gnosticism, hermetism, and tantra, particularly as they relate to the theories of C. G. Jung with special regard to the phenomenology of the psyche according to which processes of psychospiritual transformation…

Ceremonial offerings made by pre-Hispanic Mexica-Aztecs to gods and deceased loved ones once created a living spiritual community. These powerful, artistic rituals symbolized earth’s life-giving force, as the souls of the dead were invited to join the living in vigils of communion. In return, the dead offered protection to the living and prosperity in families,…

This research studies the elements needed for the transformation of modern Western consciousness as theorized by depth psychologists C. G. Jung, Marie-Louise von Franz, James Hillman, and Marion Woodman. Through a comparative analysis, this research argues that a model utilizing key components from each theorist may provide a better-suited, more stable, unified consciousness to those…

The purpose of this study was to review the work of depth psychologist C. G. Jung and theoretical physicist Basarab Nicolescu, and to compare and analyze their engagement with the concept of the opposites. The principle of opposition is essential to Jung’s point of view—and can be found in his theory of the transcendent function,…

Inspired by the Delphic maxim “know thyself,” this hermeneutic study expands upon Jung’s research on oracular collaboration with the unconscious. Depth, transpersonal, eco-spiritual, and relational psychologies are compared with modern and ancient oracular tools, texts, and methods to describe how oracular inquiry serves the individuation process. Four themes emerged in the analysis. First, oracular inquiry…

This dissertation presents a critical examination of the pervasive purity culture within evangelical Christianity, highlighting its intrinsic ties to misogyny, patriarchy, and institutionalized abstinence-only education. By delving into the historical contexts of gender and sexuality in ancient Israelite and Greco-Roman societies, and deconstructing biblical narratives concerning women, this study reveals how purity culture manipulates Christian…

This dissertation calls for a reassessment of the serpent’s role in the Garden of Eden story, proposing that traditional interpretations emphasizing seduction and disobedience overlook the serpent’s potential as an agent of creation and a catalyst for the birth of consciousness. The fundamental tension between the chaos introduced by the serpent and the order maintained…