Abstract
Dissertation Abstracts
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Jonathon Erlen 1 has provided the following annotated list of dissertations relevant to our field, based on his review of Dissertation Abstracts. 2 Entries are in alphabetical order of author; 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.
Feelings at war: The affective threats of Ernst Jünger’s early works.
Entzi, Kasina, PhD, 2019, Indiana University, 265 pp., 27668560.
This dissertation attends to Ernst Jünger’s engagement with his experiences of World War I, as rendered in his memoirs and other texts of the 1920s and early 1930s. Jünger’s preoccupation with his war experience represents an insightful study of human experiential capacities, one which considers the dynamics of extreme emotional states and deduces the importance of the body and feelings in informing individual identity and collectivity. Against a scholastic tradition of ideological critiques, this study explores how Jünger’s impressions and authorial considerations of his war experience amount to an engagement with affective realities and how they shape and re-shape notions of self and society. This includes an analysis of specific affective constellations within Jünger’s texts and how his many descriptions of feelings reveal a burgeoning consideration of the body’s role in framing consciousness and growing discontent with the social dynamics of emotion in the civilian realm. Jünger’s accounts illuminate the affective dissonance between the norms of civilian life and the emotional and bodily experiences of soldiers both during battle and afterwards, and the threat this poses to the affective hierarchies of civilian society. This dissertation also examines the controversial essay, Der Arbeiter, as Jünger’s own discussion of affect avant la lettre, as well as his attempt to imagine an affective hierarchy completely distinct from the emotional and physical norms of early twentieth century Europe. In conclusion, affective analyses of Jünger’s oeuvre foster productive lines of inquiry that not only require acknowledgement and consideration of his ideological affinities, but invite innovative exploration of the very formation and transformation of ideology, taking into account the significant impact of emotionality and the boundaries of experience.
Ethnic identity as a mediator of mental health in New Mexico’s Genizaro population at the Pueblo of Abiquiu, New Mexico, 1930-2017: A critical ethnography.
Gutierrez Sisneros, Annabelle X., PhD, 2017, New Mexico State University, 271 pp., 10760560.
The usefulness of the qualitative research paradigm of Critical Ethnography in health disparities research is viewed in this study as being of paramount importance within the praxis of nursing, specifically, in providing a window into the scene of mental health within the field of advanced psychiatric nursing, amongst the Genizaro people in a border area of northern New Mexico. The results of this study found health disparities in this population, amongst the richness of Native, Hispano, and modern historical occurrences and histories heard in the narrative. It was shown that ethnic identity does affect [their] mental health, in positive ways. This research could shape future nursing research directions in the field of critical ethnography and health but, more importantly, it could create specific treatment modalities in this unique rural population. It is hoped that perhaps attempts to address global Indigenous health themes are possible through local action(s), at locations such as the important Genizaro stronghold called Aveshu.
Child’s play: Psychoanalysis and the politics of the clinic.
Laubender, Carolyn, PhD, 2017, Duke University, NC, 292 pp., 10640084.
In 1925, Sigmund Freud wrote a short preface for August Aichhorn’s forthcoming book, Wayward Youth, hailing ‘the child’ as the future of psychoanalysis, and declaring that ‘[o]f all the fields in which psychoanalysis has been applied none has aroused so much interest . . . as the theory and practice of child training. . . . The child has become the main object of psychoanalysis research’ (p. v). Freud’s observation was prophetic as, in the following decades, the figure of the child did indeed become the central focus of psychoanalysis’s theories of psychic life. Throughout the inter-war and post-war periods in Western Europe, child analysis became the most innovative and influential field of psychoanalysis, as child analysts turned their gaze, clinically and socially, to the formative impact of the mother–child relation. As the author shows, psychoanalysts used the figure of the child to expand the political reach of their work by mobilizing the clinic as a site through which to theorize politics. This study contends that the child analytic clinic provided a site for explicitly gendered forms of political theorizing.
The rise of a new asylum: A metabletic analysis of containment as care.
O’Gradney, Daniel V., PsyD, 2018, Chicago School of Professional Psychology, 232 pp., 10680564.
There was a dramatic increase in the incarceration of those with serious mental health concerns following the policy of deinstitutionalization. Here, the phenomenon of containment is defined as care which exists in both hospitals and prisons but which existing research does not consider. This examination reviews current ideas of containment as care through an existential framework and uses historical and academic texts with the metabletic method to uncover changes in the phenomenon. Qualitative and quantitative forms of evidence comprise three key analysis themes of people, mental healthcare, and power. The discussion features neoliberalism and Foucault’s concepts of governmentality and discipline. Conclusions form two key themes of greater individuation of society and more covert means of discipline that shape containment as care in a way that invites prisons to become the new mental health asylums.
Psychodrama as a form of psychotherapy: Identifying trends of psychodrama practices among practitioners in the U.S.
Okamoto, Annika, PhD, 2018, Alliant International University, CA, 118 pp., 10634352.
Psychodrama therapy is a humanistic-experiential modality. While popular, it lacks rigorous research. The purpose of the present study was to identify trends in psychodrama therapy practices in the U.S. and prepare a quantitative survey to aid research process in psychodrama. Results of the current study lend themselves to further study of psychodrama effects: reduction of anxiety, depressive, post-traumatic and substance use/addiction symptoms, decrease of aggression, increase in self-worth and confidence, improvement of insight, social functioning and general coping skills, and increased hope and well-being. Findings suggested that psychodrama therapy uses multiple therapeutic mechanisms, and its effect relies on interpersonal, active methods. While practitioners stress the uniqueness of psychodrama as a multimodal and multisensory therapy, they also recognize the shared component with other modalities.
Soñando en Manchego: Representaciones oníricas del “Quijote”.
Pacheco-Gonzalez, Angela Patricia, 2017, PhD, Purdue University, IN, 165 pp., 10599536.
A common theme in the Spanish literature of the 16th and 17th centuries was the need to explain mental states related to appearance and reality. This complex theme includes topics such as the imagination, the use of fiction, visions, and dreams. Cervantes used the topic of appearance and reality throughout his novel Don Quixote de la Mancha. This study examines the topic of dreams in Cervantes’ novel by analyzing two fundamental dreams in the story of Don Quixote. These dreams are found in the episode of the wineskins in the first part of the novel, and in the cave of Montesinos in the second part. These scenes bring great originality to the novel by adding closely related scientific descriptions, similar to the modern neuroscientific research on dreams, especially concerning somnambulism and lucid dreaming. In contrast to other metaphoric dreams reflected in the literature of this period, these dreams directly address the nature of the mind and the mystery of its behavior.
Madness in the realm: Narratives of mental illness in late medieval France.
Pfau, Aleksandra Nicole, PhD, 2008, University of Michigan, 311 pp., 3343186.
During and after the reign of King Charles VI, chroniclers, preachers and political theorists sought to marshal the king’s madness in efforts to construct, or in some cases reconstruct, a united French realm. The concept of madness as a challenge to communities also lies at the core of legal sources about ordinary mad people. Surveying an array of legal, literary, and other sources, this study considers how communal networks, ranging from the local to the realm, responded to people considered mad. Individuals and groups interacted with the legal system, negotiating with royal notaries in Paris who helped them forge their narratives. As a result, the madness of individuals played a role in engaging people with legal mechanisms and proto-national identity constructs, as petitioners sought the king’s mercy as an alternative to local justice. Narratives about the mentally ill in late medieval France constructed madness as an inability to live according to communal rules. The composers of remission letters presented madness as a communal concern, situating the mad within the household, where care could be provided. This dissertation revises the image of the itinerant medieval mad that can be traced to Michel Foucault’s influential The History of Madness, while working toward a social history of madness through the lens of communal narratives about the mentally ill.