Faculty Member, Human and Life Sciences
Senior Lecturer
Thesis Title: A Grammar of Transformation: analysing anthropologically the construction of the psychotherapeutic practitioner
Professor David Parkin (All Souls & ISCA)
About
I completed my D.Phil in the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Oxford, in 2006. My doctorate was on ‘healing epistemologies’ and the community I studied was the psychoanalytic community in London. A version of my thesis is being published by Karnac Press in November (2008). Title: 'The Making of Psychotherapists: an anthropological analysis.
Since completing my first book I have co-edited two books on fieldwork methodology:
Davies, J. & Spencer, D. (2008) 'Emotions in the Field: the psychology and anthropology of fieldwork expereince (under review).
Davies, J. Spencer, D. (2008) Anthropological Fieldwork: A relational process. (Cambrdige Scholars Press [in press])
I am currently midway through writing and researching my fourth book. This is an anthropological analysis of contemporary perceptions, responses to, and modes of managing emotional suffering. I am particularly interested in how many of these responses more excacerbate than alleviate emotional discontent in modern society. Among other things, I use anthropological theory and research to highlight the prevalence and machinations of what I call ‘anaesthetic regimes’ – curative industries, which, in the name of healing, exacerbate the suffering from which they economically benefit.
I am also a qualified and practicing psychotherapist working in the NHS.
Contact Information
St Cross College
St Giles
Oxford
OX1 3LZ