[Commlist] Funded PhD in Psychoanalysis and Culture at Ulster University, Belfast

FUNDED PHD IN PSYCHOANALYSIS AND CULTURE

PhD Project Title/Thematic Area:
Psychoanalysis and Culture
Funding is for a period of three years for full-time PhD research

Host Institution:
Ulster University, Belfast, Northern Ireland. The PhD researcher will be 
based in Northern Ireland for the duration of the research

Application Closing Date:
Monday 27 February 2023
Visit https://www.ulster.ac.uk/doctoralcollege/find-a-phd/797348

Keywords:
Psychoanalysis, psychosocial studies, Kleinian psychoanalysis, British 
Independent tradition of psychoanalysis, culture, literature, art, film, 
music, clinical practice, transference, countertransference.

Description:
Applications are invited for funded PhD projects in the area of 
psychoanalysis and culture. Culture in this context refers to cultural 
objects, specifically film, art, literature or music. Proposals are 
sought that make use of the Kleinian and/or British Independent 
traditions of psychoanalysis. Applicants must be familiar with one or 
both of the aforementioned psychoanalytic traditions.

Projects might be textual in nature or employ psychosocial studies 
methodologies for the collection of research data. Textual projects will 
make use of psychoanalysis to theoretically analyse an aspect of one of 
the following cultural forms: film, art, literature, music. Psychosocial 
studies projects will make use of psychoanalysis together with a 
psychosocial qualitative methodological approach to collect and 
theoretically analyse research data, examples include, the free 
association narrative interview, the reverie research method, the visual 
matrix, the social dreaming matrix, psychoanalytic observation methods, 
or case study methods.

Proposals that are particularly welcome include the following:
-Textual projects that employ Kleinian and/or British Independent 
psychoanalytic thinking to theoretically examine an aspect of film, art, 
literature or music.
-Textual projects that explore and theoretically analyse references to 
cultural objects and experiences in clinical writing produced within the 
Kleinian and/or British Independent traditions of psychoanalysis.
-Psychosocial qualitative projects that consider what might happen 
unconsciously when audiences engage with one of the following: film, 
art, literature or music.
-Psychosocial qualitative projects that investigate psychoanalysts’ and 
psychoanalytic psychotherapists’ engagement with cultural objects in 
their private lives, and the possible implications of this for clinical 
practice.
-Psychosocial qualitative projects that analyse visitors’ experience of 
engaging with cultural spaces, for example, art galleries or cinemas or 
concert halls or museums.

Primary Supervisor:
The primary supervisor will be Dr Noreen Giffney, a psychoanalytic 
psychotherapist and a psychosocial theorist. Noreen is the author of The 
Culture-Breast in Psychoanalysis: Cultural Experiences and the Clinic 
(Routledge 2021). Noreen’s research expertise is in psychoanalysis, 
psychosocial studies, gender and sexuality studies, and visual culture, 
and she has published extensively in these areas. She has also co-edited 
a further six books on theories of gender and sexuality. She is a 
founding scholar of the British Psychoanalytic Council (BPC), a member 
of the Association for Psychosocial Studies (APS), and a 
fully-accredited clinical member of the Irish Forum for Psychoanalytic 
Psychotherapy (IFPP) and the Irish Council for Psychotherapy (ICP). She 
is the Director of Psychoanalysis +, an international, interdisciplinary 
initiative that brings together clinical, theoretical and artistic 
approaches to, and applications of, psychoanalysis. Noreen is a Lecturer 
in Counselling in the School of Communication and Media and a member of 
the Centre for Communication, Cultural Studies and Media at Ulster 
University in Belfast in Northern Ireland. Noreen is happy to hear from 
potential applicants and discuss any ideas or questions they might have: 
(n.giffney /at/ ulster.ac.uk) | https://www.ulster.ac.uk/staff/n-giffney

Potential applicants should familiarise themselves with the 
bibliography/recommended reading for further information about the 
Kleinian and British Independent traditions of psychoanalysis, and 
psychoanalytic and psychosocial studies methodologies:
Noreen Giffney, The Culture-Breast in Psychoanalysis: Cultural 
Experiences and the Clinic (Routledge 2021).
Noreen Giffney, ‘The Culture-Breast: A New Clinical Concept’, New 
Associations 35 (2021): 22-23. URL 
https://www.bpc.org.uk/download/4788/NA-35-Autumn_2021_landscape_v1.pdf
Salman Akhtar and Stuart Twemlow, eds. Textbook of Applied 
Psychoanalysis (Routledge 2018).
Andrew Asibong, Post-Traumatic Attachments to the Eerily Moving Image: 
Something to Watch Over Me (Routledge 2021).
Caroline Bainbridge and Candida Yates, eds. Media and the Inner World: 
Psycho-cultural Approaches to Emotion, Media and Popular Culture 
(Palgrave Macmillan 2014).
Lisa Baraitser, Enduring Time (Bloomsbury 2017).
Jill Bennett, ed. The Big Anxiety: Taking Care of Mental Health in Times 
of Crisis (Bloomsbury 2022).
Jill Bennett, ‘Visual Communication and Mental Health’, Visual 
Communication, online first article (2022): 1-25.
Jill Bennett, Lynn Froggett and Lizzie Muller, ‘Psychosocial Aesthetics 
and the Art of Lived Experience’, Journal of Psychosocial Studies 12.1-2 
(2019): 185-201.
Elizabeth Bott Spillius, Jane Milton, Penelope Garvey, Cyril Couve and 
Deborah Steiner, The New Dictionary of Kleinian Thought (Routledge 2011).
Simon Clarke and Paul Hoggett, eds. Researching beneath the Surface: 
Psycho-Social Research Methods in Practice (Routledge 2009).
Anne-Marie Cummins and Nigel Williams, eds. Further Researching beneath 
the Surface, Vol. 2: Psycho-Social Research Methods in Practice 
(Routledge 2018).
Luís Manuel Romano Delgado, Psychoanalysis and the Act of Artistic 
Creation: A Look at the Unconscious Dynamics of Creativity (Routledge 2023).
Lynn Froggett and Noreen Giffney, ‘Knowing from the Inside’ in Jill 
Bennett, ed. The Big Anxiety: Taking Care of Mental Health in Times of 
Crisis (London: Bloomsbury 2022), pp. 41-54.
Lynn Froggett, Julian Manley and Alastair Roy, ‘The Visual Matrix 
Method: Imagery and Affect in a Group-Based Research Setting’, Forum: 
Qualitative Social Research 16.3 (2015): 1-31.
Glen O. Gabbard, ed. Psychoanalysis and Film (Routledge 2001).
Mark Gerald, In the Shadow of Freud’s Couch: Portraits of Psychoanalysts 
in Their Offices (Routledge 2019).
Steven H. Goldberg and Lee Rather, eds. Opera on the Couch: Music, 
Emotional Life, and Unconscious Aspects of the Mind (Routledge 2022).
Gabriela Goldstein, ed. Art in Psychoanalysis: A Contemporary Approach 
to Creativity and Analytic Practice (Routledge 2013).
Paola Golinelli, Psychoanalytic Reflections on Writing, Cinema and the 
Arts: Facing Beauty and Loss (Routledge 2021).
Ludovica Grassi, The Sound of the Unconscious: Psychoanalysis as Music 
(Routledge 2021).
George Hagman, ed. Art, Creativity, and Psychoanalysis: Perspectives 
from Analyst-Artists (Routledge 2017).
Wendy Hollway and Tony Jefferson, Doing Qualitative Research 
Differently: A Psychosocial Approach, 2nd ed. (Sage 2013[2000]).
Roger Kennedy, The Power of Music: Psychoanalytic Explorations (Phoenix 
Publishing 2020).
Gregorio Kohon, ed. British Psychoanalysis: New Perspectives from the 
Independent Tradition (Routledge 2018).
Annette Kuhn, ed. Little Madnesses: Winnicott, Transitional Phenomena 
and Cultural Experience (I.B. Tauris 2013).
Howard B. Levin and Giusseppe Civitarese, eds. The W.R. Bion Tradition 
(Routledge 2016).
Morris Nitsun, A Psychotherapist Paints: Insights from the Border of Art 
and Psychotherapy (Routledge 2023).
Cathy Rogers, ‘Painting to Learn the Technique of Psychoanalysis’, 
British Journal of Psychotherapy 38.4 (2002): 678-692.
Merav Roth, A Psychoanalytic Perspective on Reading Literature: Reading 
the Reader (Routledge 2020).
Michael Rustin, Researching the Unconscious: Principles of the 
Psychoanalytic Method (Routledge 2019).
Desy Safán-Gerard, Chaos and Control: A Psychoanalytic Perspective on 
Unfolding Creative Minds (Routledge 2018).
Kalina Stamenova and R.D. Hinshelwood, eds. Methods of Research into the 
Unconscious: Applying Psychoanalytic Ideas to Social Science (Routledge 
2018).
Patricia Townsend, Creative States of Mind: Psychoanalysis and the 
Artist’s Process (Routledge 2019).
Paul Williams, John Keane and Sira Dermen, eds. Independent 
Psychoanalysis Today (Routledge 2012).

General Entry Requirements:
See Ulster University’s Doctoral College website: 
https://www.ulster.ac.uk/doctoralcollege/postgraduate-research/apply 
Also see the entry requirements specific to this particular funding call 
above.

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