Dissertation Oral Defenses
During the early seventeenth century, the witch hysteria engulfing Europe reached its height in the Basque territory of Spain. There, between 1609-1611, members of the Spanish Inquisition tried and executed a number of the local residents as witches. Though the historical trauma of this “witch burning” time took place over four hundred years ago, I…
This study utilizes a heuristic methodology to seek answers to several questions regarding a depth psychological approach to canine-assisted therapy. First and foremost, the study investigates why canine-assisted therapy is important as a psychotherapeutic modality, and secondly, it seeks to identify the benefits that patients, therapists, and dogs receive from their engagement in such a…
The provisional construct “moral injury” has been proposed as a means to recognize the impact of certain stressor events commonly encountered in war, yet excluded from the current definition of postraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), especially the psychological consequences of moral violations, whether experienced as perpetrator, witness, or victim. Although frequently co-morbid and exhibiting similar syndromes…
A great deal of material has been written about Chinese religion. Unfortunately, only a small fraction of this has covered the folk religion, and even less time has been spent on divination and magical practice. Operating from an engaged scholar methodology, this dissertation offers a partial remedy to this situation. Through both field study and…
This research explores whether the predominance of Logos in science, privileging dispassion and analysis, and the absence of Eros, privileging emotion and relationship, have detrimental effects on scientists and on society. The inner world of science and scientists was explored through a study of Greek deities, who serve as archetypes of different modes of being.…
This interpretive phenomenological analysis research study examined the lived experience of Traveling Environmental Workers (TEW) in light of their attachments to home and place. Four participants were asked a series of open-ended questions regarding their experiences and were encouraged to share their thoughts and feelings about their occupation. The findings included stories of emotional encounters…
Dreams are the wellsprings for embracing aspects of the self and the community that have been split off, denied, and repressed. The intent of this research is to invite interested individuals to draw on the images that arise from shared dreams situated in the world of the post-Soviet Ukrainian psyche. When the figures and images…
This hermeneutic research journey begins with the premise that Jung’s and Corbin’s works presuppose a visionary capacity far removed from the experience of most people. In Corbin, this capacity is associated with an apparitional imaginal world and creative Imagination depicted in Islamic Sūfism as accessible only to mystics. Hillman’s writings in archetypal psychology, which are…
In the Middle Ages the cardinal virtue Prudence is revered and her depiction widespread. In the modern era, however, few Westerners esteem Prudence or can recognize her iconography. This dissertation describes what happens to her personification between the sixth and twenty-first centuries by examining cultural artifacts ranging from Constantinople to the United States using content…
Through an Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) research design, this dissertation explores the experience of psychotherapists who engage in mindfulness-based psychotherapeutic approaches. The principal research question is, “How does mindfulness appear in the professional setting as a psychotherapeutic modality?” This research identifies and explores common themes that arise for participants. The common themes were: (1) Formal…
The purpose of this hermeneutical study is to examine the shadow of Christianity as it appears in culture and in therapeutic settings. Western culture has been dominated by Christianity as its cultural perspective for two thousand years. Acknowledging this opens possibilities for analysis of this culture’s shadow, and the conscious-unconscious synthesis that might seek to…
To date, there are limited studies on the relational components of couples therapy for adults with eating disorders. The purpose of this study was to gain an understanding of countertransference experiences and attachment dynamics of therapists who facilitate couples therapy with eating disorders. A qualitative method, interpretive phenomenological analysis (IPA), was used. A total of…
This dissertation study addressed the impacts of therapeutic failures and lack of Evidence Based Best Practices that are normed for use with the Native American (NA) population. This dissertation explored the use of NA Medicine Wheel (MW) techniques and cultural interventions in Substance use Disorder (SUD) treatment interventions. The research undertaken used grounded theoretical concepts…
This research was focused on understanding the relationship between Carl Jung’s concept of the collective unconscious and the Tibetan Buddhist view of emptiness. The research utilized the Tibetan Book of the Dead, subsequent commentaries, and Jung’s psychological commentary as the textual participant to understand these two concepts. Jung’s Psychological Commentary of the Tibetan Book of…
The purpose of this alchemical hermeneutics study is to explore how working with personal and archetypal images impacts the ability to self-regulate. The more notable texts analyzed are from the works of Carl Jung and his descendants, Allan Schore, and Marion Woodman. Other texts analyzed include dream images, active imagination images, and images manifested from…
This hermeneutic study with a depth psychological perspective explores the creative, inner images of filmmakers and their sublime expression using close reading of interview contents as process methodology. It describes archetypal representations and potentials germane to filmmakers’ experiences with psychological image or vision and the eventual expressions in onscreen visuals. Responding to the question “what…
The persona is an essential part of personality development that allows individuals to exhibit conventionally acceptable behaviors and to adapt them as necessary in social situations. The Jungian concept of the persona is underrepresented in depth psychological studies and so merits more development. This research aims to answer how the persona affects character development and…
This dissertation asserts that myths of the journey to the underworld in which the protagonist is female have been marginalized in favor of stories in which the descender is male. In laying out the historical basis of the scholarship on the journey to the underworld (the nekyia), the study attributes this prejudice to a Christological…
When a daughter loses her father before she has achieved a necessary degree of psychological separation from him, her capacity to mourn his literal death may become complicated. Circumstances such as the ambivalent nature of their relationship while he was living or that she has was an adolescent girl at the time of his death…
This hermeneutic and heuristic study explores how the horse–human relationship, when viewed through the lens of depth psychology, can be applied to healing and transforming trauma. The study is an attempt to provide an understanding of the potential for a horse–human relationship to be instructive and invaluable in teaching clinicians in practice and clinical training…
