Dissertation Abstracts

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 $33.00, soft $50.00, hard $65.00, PDF (when available) $31.00; for Non-University Affiliated Persons: $39.00, $56.00, $72.00, $38.00, respectively.

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

Maid of clay: An alchemical hermeneutics of Marija Gimbutas’s (1989) “Language of the Goddess”.

Barrett, Lauren Patrice, PhD, 2013, Pacifica Graduate Institute, CA, 193 pp., 3596997.

The purpose of this study is to further explore the research conducted by UCLA archaeologist, Marija Gimbutas. Its main focus is to develop a deeper understanding of her magnum opus about the Neolithic sites which she named, Old Europe. Close reading of her famous 1989 text, Language of the Goddess, applied a depth psychological lens to the images depicted in the sculptures and drawings found at those prehistoric sites. The purpose of examination of her text was to address the issue of women’s physical and emotional health in the context of today’s current social and cultural mores. Two theoretical contributions also arose. One is a description and elaboration of Jung’s individuation process in terms of a sequencing of seven primordial symbols. The second theoretical elaboration is the theory of Oogonium, or epigenetic inheritance of psyche. This theory proposes that maternal cellular offspring share all of a mother’s past psychological history as well as her emotional biochemistry.

The psychotechnics of everyday life: Hugo Munsterberg and the politics of applied psychology, 1887–1917.

Blatter, Jeremy T., PhD, 2014, Harvard University, 192 pp., 3626418.

This study examines the relationship between experimental psychology and everyday life through the prism of Hugo Münsterberg and the Harvard Psychological Laboratory during the Progressive Era. Catalyzed by calls from the burgeoning educational community in the 1890s, academic psychologists were increasingly drawn into diverse cultural and political debates bearing on diverse facets of social reform and modernization. Educators, for example, courted psychologists to improve pedagogical techniques. Advertisers sought insight into the consumer mind. Electric utility companies even hired psychological consultants in studying street lighting conditions.This work argues that Münsterberg’s psychotechnical movement represented a radical new view of the psychologist as an expert in modernization responsible for identifying, measuring and controlling the ‘human factor’ mediating all human activity.

Una lectura foucaultiana al texto del protestantismo norteamericano utilizado en puerto rico por sus ministros en la construccion de la subjetividad de la feligresia puertorriquena: Mediante el uso de las tecnologias del poder y del ser.

Colon Hernandez, Ricardo, PsyD, 2013, Universidad del Turabo (Puerto Rico), 203 pp., 3630820.

This study presents a Critical Discourse Analysis (CAD) of the Foucauldian style of language used by the ministers of the American Protestant churches in 1898. The author uses the paradigm of Foucault’s CAD to demonstrate the processes of evangelization carried out by the church ministers and used to achieve power in the Puerto Rican society. Foucauldian CAD allows an analysis of the genealogical processes of history and social and psychological implications for Puerto Rico to show the whole process of evangelization carried out on the island followed the concept of Manifest Destiny in the USA, in order to maintain the then status quo in the political, economic, social power structure of the Puerto Rican Colony.

Experiential psychotherapy: research, theory, and philosophy: A synergistic concept with an emerging new frontier: [1].

Dweck, Sydney Stevan, PhD, 1978, University of Southern California, 177 pp., DP24268.

The author claims that since Freud’s death his vision of psychoanalysis has lost its way and become less than effective. For this reason this study seeks to delineate another philosophical basis for human behavior which is called ‘experimental psychotherapy’. It is emerging out of necessity as a corrective of the psychoanalytic school of thought. The field of experimental psychotherapy includes existentialists, humanists, and all who support the concept of phenomenology, tracing its roots back to the book of Genesis.

Soul sleepers: A history of somnambulism in the United States, 1740–1840.

Friedman, Kristen Anne Keerma, PhD, 2014, Harvard University, 330 pp., 3626616.

The strange behavior of somnambulists in the this period attracted the attention of different emerging professional groups, each of which sought the authority to explain what the condition revealed about the role of volition in governing the human mind, and by extension, the body. Clergy, physicians, and lawyers fought with one another for interpretive rights over the embodied knowledge that somnambulists produced while in their paroxysms. The group most successful at resistance was that of female somnambulists; each of them showed evidence of possessing a dual consciousness. The women whose cases are covered in this work represent the broad failure of any of these professions to gain ultimate authority in explaining the problematic behavior posed by somnambulists. This study also traces the history of how somnambulists came to be associated with criminality through their primary association with the ‘night season’, a cultural framework that colonial Americans imposed on their environment to regulate disorderly conduct, especially on the part of women, young men, Blacks, and Native Americans. Somnambulism in the USA revealed attitudes about what standards an interpreter of nature ought to hold.

A Psychobiography of Frederick Douglass: Towards a reimagining of African American subjectivity.

Gibson, Danjuma Gwandoya, PhD, 2014, Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary, IL, 210 pp., 3624546.

The author attempts a psychobiography of Frederick Douglass, the face of the anti-slavery movement in late 19th-century America. The primary methodology for this project includes a psychoanalytic examination of the four autobiographic writings by Douglass. Ultimately, this project sets out to answer the question of the source of his subjectivity, given that he was embedded in the extremity of the slave society of his time. Psychoanalytic theory, for the most part, would suggest that the robust subjectivity as presented by Douglass’s career would be unlikely, given his exposure to such an extremely hostile and limiting environment. Consequently, this project sets out to uncover the etiology of his psychic enterprise and the essence of his personhood that allowed him to overcome these obstacles.

The development of Samuel Johnson’s theory of neurosis, 1709–1759: [1].

Gross, Gloria Sybil, PhD, 1977, University of Southern California, 252 pp., DP23054.

In his writings dealing with psychology, Samuel Johnson probes the inner logic of psychoneurosis by baring hideous deformity, as Swift and Pope did. Yet Johnson’s added application of a kind of therapeutic balm diminishes the vehemence of attack without lessening its import. A pioneer in psychiatry, Johnson treats neurotic characteristics with an empathy that anticipates the modern therapist-patient relationship. His reassuring and supportive comments seem to convey the intimacy and insight of successful therapeutic encounters. His analysis of Don Quijote is a small sampling from what could be considered his theory of neurosis, formulated in works such as the periodical essays, the biographies and especially Rasselas. Johnson documents neurotic characteristics in the mid-18th century with the astonishing insight that does not appear again until the advent of professional psychiatric literature published well into the 19th century.

Narrative voice in autographical writing.

Heidt, Edward R., PhD, 1989, University of Southern California, 396 pp., DP23141.

This study examines selected narrative units from autobiographical documents in terms of the mimetic/diegetic voices which express acts and states of consciousness unique to the autobiographer. Eight pieces are used to illustrate this: Lawrence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy, Hilda Doolittle’s Hermione Gart, Samuel Beckett’s anonymous man lying on his back in the dark, Eugene Ionesco’s anonymous man about to commit suicide, Helen Keller, Christopher Nolan, John Stuart Mill and Maya Angelou. Speech act theory and narrative theory set the theoretical frame for the genre study while Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology and Jacques Derrida’s language philosophy set a philosophical frame. These theoretical and philosophical stipulations and clarifications, supported by the autobiographical examples, serve to differentiate and constitute autobiographical writing as a genre in its own right.

Psychoanalysis & rhetoric: Metaphors in the work of Melanie Klein & J.-B. Pontalis.

Holohan, Michael D., PhD, 2014, University of California, Vera Cruz, 165 pp., 3630697.

This project examines the role of rhetoric and figurative language in the formation of psychoanalytic theory. The author is concerned with the description and analysis of the rhetorical foundations by which the psychoanalytic works of Klein and Pontalis are made possible. This approach puts psychoanalysis in conversation with larger questions within the humanities about the structure and construction of discourses and the epistemological status of theory in relation to its object of inquiry to broaden and advance an understanding of the psychoanalytic tradition as a development of rhetorical form.

An aporia of the psychoanalytic discourse from a Lacanian perspective with special reference to the theory of intersubjectivity.

Koser, Nate, PhD, 2013, Saybrook Graduate School and Research Center, CA, 168 pp., 3594259.

In psychoanalysis, the relationship that forms between psychoanalyst and patient has been a topic of perennial theoretical and clinical importance. Due to the singularity of each analysis, continued research on this topic is essential. In this theoretical work, this relationship and its influence on the clinical discourse are studied. More precisely, each of these clinical constructs is addressed through the theoretical lens of the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. From a Lacanian perspective, the transference, countertransference, projection, and identification all possess an intersubjective structure without which they would be unable to function in the psychoanalytic discourse. The clinical utilization of this aporia is suggested to be one of the unique contributions of Lacanian psychoanalysis. The implications of this research for the psychoanalytic discourse are discussed.

The rhetoric of madness.

Landis, Kathleen M., PhD, 1992, University of Southern California, 187 pp., DP23171.

The elemental struggle of humankind, the oppression and madness it engenders: these topics, refracted through the lens of contemporary fiction, are examined – and in particular, madness as a consequence of struggle and oppression. Madness, too, has been a frequent theme in literature, illustrating the extremes to which an individual can be driven by psycho-social forces. From Medea to Hamlet, from Lady Macbeth to Raskolnikov, mad characters have often occupied center stage, although they have rarely evinced the same kind of madness. The terms ‘mad’ and ‘madness’ are so widely used today, however, that they run the risk of being cliches. Yet post-existentialist mad characters display striking similarities to a specific kind of madness: schizophrenia. The overall thesis associating madness with the ‘primitive struggle’ of humankind reflects the views of psychologists during the 1950s and 1960s. Because, however, the possibility of madness depends on the possibility of sanity and the existence of a consensually validated reality from which the mad person breaks, elements of liberal humanism perforce creep into the analysis.

Saved by madness: Responses and reactions to domestic violence against women in Francophone African novels.

Mba, Mary Onieji, PhD, 2014, University of Kansas, 245 pp., 3625990.

This work examines responses and reactions to domestic violence with special emphasis on madness in three major sub-Saharan francophone novels from West and Central Africa: Mariama Bâ’s Un Chant écarlate (1981) (Scarlet Song), Myriam Warner-Vieyra’s Juletane (1982), and Sony Labou Tansi’s Les yeux du volcan (1988). The author studies the concept of madness as a myth and a cultural construction, as well as how women, to serve their own ends, can appropriate madness and inflict violence on others. It not only studies the violence done to women by men, but all forms of domestic violence, which include those done by women to men, by parents to their children, by in-laws and extended family members to wives of the family, and among co-wives.

Exploring Jungian archetypes as potential predictors of infidelity.

Miller-Roach, Kattrina, PhD, 2014, University of Mississippi, 152 pp., 3628591.

This study uses quantitative methods to gain an understanding of psychological choices impacting behaviors of monogamy and infidelity in committed relationships. The evolutionary theory of human sexual behavior and Jungian archetypal theory provide the theoretical framework for the study.

An inquiry into madness: The meaning of madness in the works of Virginia Woolf, Andre Breton, Y. H. Brenner.

Mor, Samuel, PhD, 1979, University of Southern California, 132 pp., DP22539.

Madness has been brought to the surface in literature as a complex, social phenomenon that is part of the basic human condition. Beginning with a survey of the image of madness in major literary pieces dating back to the Bible, the author focuses most of this work on the depiction of madness in the writing of Brenner, Breton, and Woolf. Each culture has defined madness to fit into its own belief system and these authors continue that long-standing trend.

Untoward genius: Psychoanalytic study of the life and early writings of James Boswell, Esq.

Newman, David J., PhD, 1993, University of Southern California, 457 pp., DP23182.

The fact that James Boswell is difficult if not impossible to understand without recourse to psychological explanations makes him a particularly appropriate subject for an interpretation that draws on modern theories of psychoanalysis. Modern psychological theory, in particular the epigenetic developmental theory of Erik Erikson and modern theories of narcissism, are especially useful in a work on Boswell for yet another reason. These particular theories provide good accounts of what the interaction between the baby Boswell, his parents, and his culture should have been if he were to have grown into a happily productive, responsible member of his society. This study advances a theory about how Boswell’s early childhood produced the psychic forces the prevented him from becoming a serious poet but transformed him into a genius with prose. Erikson provides the overarching theory for the author’s interpretation of Boswell’s psychological development, or lack thereof.

Lectura queer, psicoanalitica y feminista de la obra narrativa de Sylvia Molloy.

Ocasio-Varela, Marieangie, PhD, 2014, University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras, 216 pp., 3624641.

This work examines the narrative texts of the distinguished writer and literary critic Sylvia Molloy. Her work constantly questions patriarchal discourse, sexuality, identity and memory within the context of Latin American literature, culture and society. The author focuses on developing a queer, psychoanalytic and feminist analysis of Molloy’s narrative texts. The theoretical approach used in this study helps to identify gender, sexuality, memory and identity as concepts that are inherently dynamic and elastic. In addition, this research outlines the possibility of a queer autobiographical writing, while developing an analytical framework that contextualizes the marginalization and exclusion of feminine, gay, lesbian and queer voices from the Latin American literary canon of the 20th century.

Blind to their blindness: A history of the denial of illness.

Phelps, Scott Douglas, PhD, 2014, Harvard University, 273 pp., 3627029.

For many historians, sociologists, and anthropologists of medicine, ‘disease’ and ‘illness’ are not equivalent. Whereas ‘disease’ denotes the physicians’ ostensibly objective criteria, ‘illness’ emphasizes the patient’s subjective experience. This work examines that distinction precisely at a point where it breaks down, in the history of a diagnosis called ‘anosognosia’, also known as the denial of illness. The history of ‘Anton’s syndrome’, later called ‘anosognosia’ by the French neurologist Joseph Babinski, spans more than a century and a half across two continents and through both World Wars. The author discusses its history as a special type of lens to focus on some of the broader intellectual and professional differences between neurology and psychiatry. It is argued that the clinical perception and portrayal of this apparent loss of the patient’s experience depended on historical patterns of thinking about the distinction between conscious and unconscious perception, as well as categories of health and disease.

The invisible labor: Nineteenth-century art, the unconscious, and the origins of Surrealism.

Phillips, Allison Miller, PhD, 2012, University of Iowa, 363 pp., 3628481.

Rebellion against traditional aesthetics to express personal symbols and dreamlike visions connects the 19th-century Symbolists with the 20th-century Surrealists. This study explores the 19-century psychological theories and occult beliefs behind automatism and the unconscious, from the late Romantic to the Surrealist movements. The primary visual sources include 19th-century and early 20th-century paintings; artistic, ‘spirit’, and some scientific photographs, and artist’s prints, collages, and drawings. The author addresses how Romantic revolutions in art and psychology responded to theories such as mesmerism, spiritism, and the ‘discovery’ of the unconscious, and the later impact of these developments on Symbolism. Further work expands this research to include the impact of psychology and spiritism on the Symbolist movement’s esoteric subjects and increasingly abstract style.

Jung and sex: Re-visioning the treatment of sexual issues in psychotherapy through an exploration and analysis of Jung’s writings on sexual phenomena.

Santana, Edward Smith, PhD, 2014, Pacifica Graduate Institute, CA, 267 pp., 3625741.

This study explores C.G. Jung’s theoretical and clinical approach to sexual phenomena as a potential means for re-visioning and improving mainstream treatments of sexual issues in psychotherapy. The research is intended to provide greater knowledge and awareness of Jung’s work in this area and to contribute a depth psychological perspective to the current treatment of sexual issues. Jung’s writings and statements on sexual phenomena are analyzed using a qualitative hermeneutic methodology. This research brings attention to a large body of Jung’s work on human sexuality, ranging from pioneering thoughts on sexual expressions of the soul, to contradictory statements on sexual phenomena. These writings comprise many important and complex perspectives on the sexual instinct and the diverse sexual expressions of the psyche. The findings and conclusions of the research suggest how Jungian and depth psychological perspectives could address gaps in sex therapy and respond to calls from sex therapists for greater collaboration. Depth psychologists have the opportunity to contribute an essential understanding of sexual phenomena and reclaim aspects of Jung’s original and important contributions.

Defining the soldier’s wounds: U.S. shell shock in international perspective.

Stagner, Annessa C., PhD, 2014, University of California, Irvine, 276 pp., 3627185.

The author analyzes the history of the ill-defined medical diagnosis ‘shell shock’ in the USA, contextualizing it as part of a broader, global experience felt by soldiers – and nations – during and after World War I. This study draws on the large historiography of World War I-era shell shock in Europe where shell shock came to represent the incurable wounds of the soldier and nation. It argues that in contrast to Europe, Americans portrayed shell shock as a temporary, curable war injury. Drawing upon a wide variety of medical, military, and diplomatic national and international sources, this study provides the first comprehensive analysis of US shell shock in the international context of World War I. It takes a novel approach to US-world relations by revealing the importance of medical discourses to early 20th-century global politics and diplomacy. While tracing the distinct racial and gendered definitions shell shock came to hold in the American context, this work traces American doctors’ unrelenting attempts to heal not only the shell-shocked soldier but also the world’s behavioral ills.