My publications and presentations

Issue 38, vol. 2; p. 55-79 (2015)

A taboo against touch seems to pervade psychotherapy practice. This feminist rhetorical analysis elucidates the gender dynamics at play in the discourse on touch within psychotherapy research and practice. I argue that touch functions as a feminine gendered communication style rendering it easily dismissed from hegemonic and patriarchal voices in psychotherapy.

Issue 36, vol. 1; p. 20-28 (2016)

Here I review the theological and historical significance of communion in Scottish psychoanalysis as it influences the life and work of R.D. Laing. Particular attention is paid to Laing’s conceptualization of communion as crucial in working with individuals suffering from schizophrenia. Specific case examples are culled from Laing’s memoir Wisdom, Madness, and Folly: The Making of a Psychiatrist. Following Laing’s work, communing with the other is argued as the essential precondition for healing as embodied in the work of some therapeutic communities, where physically communing, or being-with patients, is the impetus for psychological healing.

Issue 46, vol. 4; p. 412-423 (2018)

The feeling of at-homeness provides an important orienting context in human experience. The importance of at-homeness is explored in phenomenological literature, and then I apply this literature to the experience of living in therapeutic communities. At-homeness is argued as a potential healing element for the existential aloneness those without a relational home may experience.

Issue 27, vol. 2; p. 339-351 (2016)

I explore the similarities between the ideas and writings of psychiatrist and analyst R.D. Laing, and the practice of Open Dialogue in Western Lapland, Finland. Open Dialogue is a community mental health orientation to working with first-break psychosis. Since Laing did not propose a therapeutic way of working with families with a member experiencing psychosis, Open Dialogue may be as close as we get to an applied Laingian approach.