Research on the history of psychiatry *

Availability

At institutions which have purchased the ProQuest databases, abstracts of most of the dissertations can be downloaded, and many entire texts can also be downloaded free of charge.

A printed version of a dissertation can be purchased from ProQuest Company, 300 N. Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, MI481 06-1346, USA (tel. 800-5210600). Current prices for University Affiliated Persons: unbound $39.00, soft $54.00, hard $70.00, PDF (when available) $37.00, microfilm $46.00, microfiche $51.00.

Jonathon Erlen ^** has provided the following annotated list of dissertations relevant to our field, based on his review of Dissertation Abstracts (2011). Entries are in alphabetical order of author; each entry gives title, author, year, doctorate, institution, number of pages (if known) and unique identifier/order number. Note that in titles, no accents are used in Dissertation Abstracts.

Readings of trauma and madness in Hemingway, H.D., and Fitzgerald.

Anderson, Sarah Wood, 2010, PhD, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 204pp. 3409902.

This project explores how Modernist fiction narratives represent trauma, considering first the struggle, commonly identified in the psychology literature as between the need to speak about one’s trauma and the equally powerful impulse to keep silent. Examining some of the writings of Hemingway, H. D. and Fitzgerald, the author presents instances of female insanity exacerbated by sexual and creative conflicts between men and women.

The medieval Hebrew version of psychology in Avicenna’s Salvation (al-Najat).

Berzin, Gabriella, 2010, PhD, Harvard University, MA, 241 pp. 3414632.

Changing circumstances during the 12th century led to a transfer of scholarship from Islamic Spain to Christian Europe. This historical development reached its climax with an explosion of Hebrew translations of Arabic scientific and philosophical works during the 13th and early 14th centuries in southern France, Christian Spain and Italy. The most important translator of the philosophical works of the noted physician Avicenna was Todros Todrosi, who was active in first half of the 14th century in southern France. One prominent 11th- philosophical text translated by Todros is Avicenna’s The Salvation (al-Najat), which includes an extensive section on psychology. The analysis of Todros’s language will enable scholars to trace borrowings from his Hebrew translations in Jewish sources, and thereby contribute to future research on the impact of Avicenna on late medieval Jewish philosophy.

Carl Jung’s interpretation of Wolfgang Pauli’s dreams: The Bailey Island, Maine, and New York City seminars of 1936 and 1937.

Brown, Richard Paul, 2010, PhD, Saybrook Graduate School and Research Center, CA, 241pp. 3418924.

This dissertation reviews the development of Jung’s dream theory and addresses the question as to whether or not he was influenced by the dreams of the Nobel Prize winning physicist, Wolfgang Pauli. Jung provided an extensive analysis of Pauli’s dreams, which are contained in the lightly edited, unpublished transcripts of lectures delivered in 1936 and 1937. A chronological history of the development of Jung’s dream theory is presented, followed by a discussion of the relationship between Jung and Pauli. An analysis of the seminars found that Pauli’s dreams did, in part, support Jung’s dream theory.

Tongueless: Representation of the mentally disabled and the novel.

Cline, Brent Walter, 2010, PhD, Western Michigan University, 414 pp. 3424850.

Acknowledging and building off the work of writers in disability studies such as David Mitchell, Sharon Snyder and Tobin Siebers who concentrate on the bodies of the disabled, this study shows that attempts to represent the mentally disabled are fundamentally different. Examining such well recognized novels as Moby-Dick, The Sound and the Fury and The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, these representations may reflect not only historical patterns of cultural values, but more importantly show that the question of the mentally disabled in literature is the question of the structure of each respective novel’s discourse.

Veterans of the 1st Persian Gulf War: A study of medically unexplained symptom models.

Collins, Alexis H., 2010, PhD, Loma Linda University, CA, 71 pp. 3424838.

Psychiatry has recognized that warfare has created new psychiatric disorders in combat troops. In 1990–1, shortly after the 1st Persian Gulf War, a number of veterans began complaining about a wide range of symptoms, the most common of which were: fatigue, headache, sleep disturbance, low mood and memory loss. These symptoms were similar to those experienced by individuals with Medically Unexplained Illnesses such as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Fibromyalgia, Irritable Bowel Syndrome, Multiple Chemical Sensitivity, and Somatoform Disorders. This study indicates the presence a Gulf War Illness which is a separate, unifying concept that best accounts for both the mental and physical symptoms experienced by veterans of the 1st Persian Gulf War. Treatment recommendations and future considerations are discussed.

Headless mothers, magic cows, and lakes of blood: The Parashurama cycle in the “Mahabharata" and beyond.

Collins, Brian Hagen, 2010, PhD, University of Chicago, IL, 279 pp. 3419623.

Using theoretical models suggested by psychoanalysts Julia Kristeva, Jacques Lacan and André Green, anthropological philosopher René Girard, and political theorists Carl Schmitt and Giorgio Agamben, this study analyses stories of the Indian epic hero Parashurama in terms of four major motifs: mixed birth, matricide, cattle theft and mass killing. Specific attention is paid to the connections between ritual, revenge and desire.

Refractions from the Book of Amos: A study of a literature of violence from Marxist and Freudian perspectives.

Cowsill, Jay Arethur, 2009, PhD, University of Saskatchewan, Canada, 182 pp. NR62662.

This study of the biblical Book of Amos from Marxist and Freudian perspectives demonstrates that the critical approaches so designated complement one another well enough to be adapted and employed constructively in the study of literature and literary production. From the Freudian or psychoanalytic perspective, the text exemplifies a consciousness suffering the traumatic effects of an earthquake – effects reflected in the text’s imagery, intensity of voice, incoherence, anxiety, threat of exile, and non-representability. From the Marxist perspective, the method employed assumes that the literary Amos in the text has been derived from an incarnate original Amos reshaped in the process of literary production to serve certain socio-political interests.

The Secret of the Blue Canyon Caves: An analysis of the lost child archetype, an experiential narrative for the clinician.

Gibson-Kottler, Richelle, 2009, PhD, Pacifica Graduate Institute, CA, 228 pp. 3417864.

The purpose of this study is to discover, to interpret and to develop further Carl Jung’s dynamic body of work on active imagination in the writing of an historical fiction work about a lost Native American Indian child. This survival tale reveals metaphorically the work of the depth psychologist. After completing the narrative, a hermeneutical study of this literary piece is analysed from the three post-Jungian perspectives; classical, archetypal and developmental.

A genealogical examination and grounded theory of the role of human enhancement technology in American political culture.

Hays, Sean A., 2009, PhD, Arizona State University, 178 pp. 3391969.

This study argues for a role for critical history in analysing and contextualizing technological progress in society. Critical history is defined as ‘the ability to examine the minute linkages and relationships between historical artifacts’, as such relationships ‘cannot be assumed to lend themselves to a linear historical progress’. The author posits that current literature is guilty of a so-called ‘linear fallacy’ in which flawed analogies between current and past technological advances are used to generate predictive hypotheses. The author supports this assertion with public opinion data, case studies and basing his method for critical history on Nietzsche’s genealogy.

Reality defects: Monomania, nostalgia, and trauma in Victorian writings.

Kiesel, Alyson J., 2010, PhD, New York University, 228 pp. 3408286.

This study argues that 19th-century representations of newly pathologized disorders – monomania, nostalgia and trauma – helped inform the features of an emergent realism and ultimately prompted literary scholars to develop a new critical stance. The author contends that in their industrial fictions, Benjamin Disraeli and Elizabeth Gaskell erected critiques of nostalgic reverie to bolster their realist and political projects while Charles Dickens expressed nostalgia for the socially redemptive powers of generic forms that turn away from verisimilitude. Special focus is placed on the implicit and explicit conversations about these pathologies among medical, fictional and literary critical discourses that helped produce the genre which literary scholars now recognize as realism.

Working with the drive: A Lacanian psychoanalytic approach to the treatment of addictions.

Laurita, Cristina R., 2010, PhD, Duquesne University, PA, 356 pp. 3412659.

Lacanian clinical scholarship in the USA is disappointingly sparse. This study examines the clinical utility of applying Lacanian psychoanalytic interventions to the treatment of a wide variety of addictions. By combining theoretical exegesis with clinical case studies of psychotherapy with patients who struggled with addictions, this project seeks to contribute to the improvement of the clinical treatment of addictions and to further the advancement of Lacanian clinical scholarship in the USA. The author focuses on how addictions relate to the psychoanalytic concept of the drive, which is closely linked to the repetition compulsion and what Lacan refers to as jouissance – a kind of painful enjoyment beyond the pleasure principle.

In remembrance of Insoo Kim Berg and Ivan Boszormenyi-Nagy: A look into the conceptual frameworks and major contributions of two international marriage and family therapists whom the field “lost” in 2007.

Mason, Nichelle Elayne, 2010, PhD, University of Louisiana at Monroe, 168 pp. 3416519.

Heritage plays an enormous part in who one becomes as a person and as a professional. Our view of life is determined and ultimately shaped by our experiences with others. This circle of influence is demonstrated in this study through an exploration of how heritage has played a part in the lives and works of Insoo Kim Berg and Ivan Boszormenyi-Nagy. Several pieces of literature taken from the numerous published works of these two pioneers will be analysed through a hermeneutical method of inquiry to demonstrate the professional contributions they have made to the field of marriage and family therapy.

Political violence in South Africa: A case study of “necklacing” in Colesberg.

Mbuqe, Sipho, 2010, PhD, Duquesne University, PA, 285 pp. 3412499.

This study examines certain psychological dimensions and implications of political violence in general by means of a specific incident that took place in Colesberg, South Africa in 1985 when Ms. Nokwakha Dilato was savagely murdered by a group of people. The author conducted a series of interviews with three of these perpetrators and analysed the court transcripts of the trial and sentencing of these individuals. The conclusions focus on the reality that the psychological theories of violence, focusing as it does on the individual, misses the crucial mediating and situated importance of context, while contextual theories neglect the agency and subjectivity of the individual.

On nature and the psyche: The psychological and spiritual significance of nature-based numinous experiences.

Nuckols, Gregory Thomas, 2010, PhD, Pacifica Graduate Institute, CA, 295 pp. 3417858.

The author investigates a specific type of spiritual or mystical experience occurring in nature. The primary data for this study are written accounts of nature-based numinous experiences found in the published works of Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, Richard Jefferies, Sigurd Olson and Annie Dillard. Using a hermeneutic method, the nature-based numinous experiences of these writers are explored using the general interpretive framework of the religious approach to the psyche, a theoretical system within the field of depth psychology developed by Corbett (1996). Within this framework, ideas from the schools of object relations, self psychology and Jungian psychology are used to investigate the personal significance of the nature-based numinous experiences for each individual.

Language, self and context: Socio-historical constitution and interactional actualization of the self through discourse genres; the case of Turkish heteroglossia.

Numanbayraktaroglu, Sevda, 2010, PhD, University of Chicago, IL, 439 pp. 3419677.

With its strong ties to the issues surrounding morality, subjectivity and consciousness, the self has been one of the most widely debated subjects in the history of the social sciences. A comprehensive account that grasps the social constitution and interactional emergence, as well as the psychological uniqueness and unity of the self, has still not been developed successfully. This study examines the tight relationship between the Turkish socio-historical context and subjectivity apparent in the various ways Turkish women, as the traditional guardians of customs and family, understand themselves and make sense of their lives. The author explores the heterogeneity of Turkish women’s perspectives and demonstrates the impact of globalization on the Turkish subject, through a study of the polyphony of discourses of womanhood in Turkey, the impact of the modernization process in their genesis, and how these discourses shape the subjectivities of women coming from different social backgrounds.

Whose story is it anyway?: Constructing the stories and pathology of madness/mental illness in the contemporary U.S.

Rector, Claudia A., 2010, PhD, University of Maryland, College Park, 219 pp. 3409645.

This is an interdisciplinary examination of how the cultural authority of medicine compresses a range of individual experiences into narrow, standardized narratives of the experience of depression, for instance, or other phenomena classified as illness. The author claims that biological psychiatry has eclipsed psychoanalysis and that medical definitions of mental illness have become the culturally dominant way of determining what kinds of physical or psychological phenomena are classified as pathological. Secondly, these definitions shape the stories of personal experience with such phenomena, so that standard narrative formats emerge for describing ‘individual’ experiences of both physical disability and madness/mental illness. Finally, this standardization of the personal story often aligns with medical narratives in a way that reflects the storytellers’ disempowered position in the medical industry, in that telling the ‘right’ story positions them to receive the benefits of working within the medical system, and telling the ‘wrong’ story becomes an act of political activism.

The Sigmund Freud and C.G. Jung correspondence: A Levinsonian study of the mentor-protege relationship.

Rodriguez, Adam Joseph, 2010, PsyD, The Wright Institute, CA, 254 pp. 3424300.

This psychobiographical study explores the relationship between Freud and Jung. The reconstruction of their relationship is based on archival materials, including their correspondence, and the analysis relies on Levinson’s theory of adult development. The Freud-Jung relationship was found to conform to the mentor-protégé model identified by Levinson. Their correspondence revealed that theoretical disagreements were not at the core of the eventual dissolution of their relationship. This mentor-protégé relationship was important to Freud’s ongoing adult development as well. Freud’s Dream evolved into the desire to spread psychoanalysis throughout the world, a movement he called ‘the cause’. When Jung defected, Freud was without an heir, was mourning the loss of his ‘crown prince’ and believed his Dream to be threatened.

Insane children and youth in late-Victorian Britain.

Rosenthal, Amy Rebok, 2010, PhD, Indiana University, 192 pp. 3409784.

Victorian society sought to improve identification, categorization and management of individuals who were unable to conform to society’s expectations. This was particularly true of insane children and youth, whose mental health compromised their ability to function within their own families and within the larger community. Asylum records from this period, along with articles by leading British practitioners, present an intriguing picture of the quest to establish categories of diagnosis and treatment for a disease whose manifestations often defied definition. By examining individual cases of British children treated and confined for insanity, the author establishes the common methods of identifying, diagnosing and treating this ‘uncommon malady’ and seeks to illuminate the ways in which insane children and youth ultimately created tensions between the family, the community and the state.

The brilliance of nearness: Feminine triads in Greek mythology.

Rossi, Safron Elsabeth, 2009, PhD, Pacifica Graduate Institute, CA, 205 pp. 3417871.

This study re-evaluates the monotheistic Great Mother Goddess myth and its application to women’s studies and depth psychology. The author explores female triads in Greek mythology from both a depth psychological and a feminist perspective. The female triads in this study include: the Fates (Moirai), Furies (Erinyes/Eumenides), Hesperides, Graces (Charities), Hours ( Horai), Gorgons, Sirens, Graiai and Thriai. Special attention is paid to the theories concerning the trinity and triad symbol in depth psychology put forward in the works of Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung and Eric Neumann.

What were they thinking? Samuel A. Stouffer and “The American Soldier”.

Ryan, Joseph W., 2010, PhD, University of Kansas, 329 pp. 3411999.

This study considers the life and career of Professor Stouffer (1900–60) as it relates to his landmark sociological work Studies in Social Psychology in World War II, Vols I and II, more commonly known as The American Soldier. Stouffer served as an expert consultant to the Secretary of War in his capacity as chief social science analyst of the US Army’s Research Branch, Information and Education Division, surveying approximately half a million soldiers to determine their mental status. Stouffer represents the rise of the expert and the growing importance of research over intuition as a basis of knowledge in both the US military and the USA as a whole during the 20th century.

Empathy embodied: An integrative literature review of the history, philosophy, psychology, clinical science, neuroscience, and phenomenology of the construct of empathy with clinical recommendations.

Salvat, Andrei, 2010, PsyD, California Institute of Integral Studies, 534 pp. 3414090.

The notion of ‘empathy’ has had a history marked by ambiguity, discrepancy and controversy among philosophers, psychologists and behavioural, social and medical scholars. Despite the conceptual ambiguity, empathy is among the most frequently mentioned humanistic dimensions of patient care and is one of the main requirements for successful therapeutic outcomes regardless of theoretical orientation. The relevant psychotherapeutic literature consists primarily of studies examining the cognitive, affective and communicative aspects of empathy. In rethinking the empathic process that includes the cognitive, affective, communicatory, physiological and somatic dimensions of empathy – which will have implications for both practice and training – his study utilizes an integrative literature review. This type of review not only facilitates an integration of research from diverse fields, but also addresses the need for a review, critique and rethinking of the expanding, diverse knowledge base related to the concept of empathy.

Illusions of a future: Psychoanalysis and the biopolitics of desire.

Schechter, Kathryn A., 2010, PhD, University of Chicago, IL, 274 pp. 3419694.

The author describes the cultural and social processes through which psychoanalysis is being transformed under neoliberal medicine in the USA. By combining an ethnographic, historical and theoretical account of psychoanalysis’ undecidability qua cultural practice, this work illuminates the particular deepening under neoliberalism of a fundamental structural condition of double bind that plagues the psychoanalytic institution. It also demonstrates the inexorable government control of psychoanalytic practice over the course of the transition from liberal to neoliberal reason in late 20th century medicine. Special attention is paid to the polemical evaluations of one another’s positions on ‘what works’ in psychoanalysis and their endorsement of a set of more and more personal, less and less alienable qualities of expertise.

Evolutionary theory and the belief/desire model of the mind.

Schulz, Armin W., 2010, PhD, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 201 pp. 3424248.

The author evaluates the history of the methodology of evolutionary psychology and how this methodology can be applied to various questions surrounding our belief/desire cognitive architecture. This study addresses the following questions: why we have beliefs and desires at all, what the differences are between beliefs and desires, and how we use beliefs and desires to make decisions.

Towards a unified clinical science: A critical analysis of Henriques’ Unified Theory of Psychology.

Stout, Jason C., 2010, PhD, James Madison University, VA, 191 pp. 3419009.

Modern psychotherapy research has moved away from the dominance of single school approaches and towards systems that consolidate and unify the key insights of various theories. The author provides a brief history of psychotherapy with special attention given to the psychotherapy integration movement. Then, the call for a new wave of integration – a UCS – is presented along with five domains and ten criteria that define its scope and composition. Finally this paper establishes a framework for assessing UCS proposals and uses the criteria to assess the viability of a promising new system.

Responses to the Jungian archetypal feminine in “King Lear”, “Hamlet”, “Othello”, and “Romeo and Juliet”.

Tubbs, Lucy Loraine, 2010, PhD, Baylor University, TX, 222 pp. 3418979.

Jungian archetypal theory is a valuable mode of criticism precisely because it elucidates important conscious and unconscious processes at work within the Shakespearean literary mind. The author uses a Jungian archetypal explication of the four plays, with reference to Erich Neumann’s views, to discuss the origins of the literary ritual of tragedy. Each tragedy illustrates the subversive interactions of the archetypal feminine with ‘masculine’ consciousness; each exemplifies the effort of Shakespeare’s protagonists to subjugate, to demonize, to exorcise or in some way to integrate the feminine.