Academic and Professional Aspirations
It is no secret in the psychology paradigm that earning a PsyD degree in clinical psychology is the most crucial milestone in the life and career of every researcher and scientist in this field. This program will enable me to utilize my current work experience for further research on maintaining and improving mental health.
Thanks to this program, I will be able to make plans for patients who are experiencing moral and mental problems more effectively. Additionally, a Ph.D. in psychology will enable me to refine my research skills in abnormal and cognitive psychology. Therefore, I believe that Point Park University’s PsyD program is an excellent opportunity to realize these plans.
Alignment with the University’s PsyD Program
The PsyD program from Point Park invites its students to take a look at psychology from the perspective of the main theories and trends, and take into account the possible symbiosis of a person’s biological origin and temperament. Considering that this program does not dictate that all people can only be inclined towards psychological analysis from the side of established paradigms, this will allow me to focus on my main tasks in the intervention center, where, in addition to clinical care of clients, I will be able to apply research skills.
Moreover, the university program’s policy encourages diversity and strongly opposes discrimination on any grounds. This fact will enable many students, including myself, to understand the interaction between a student’s cultural background and the modern world, as well as its influence on the perception of mental health issues. I would also like to research that topic. The purpose of this program is to enable more effective application of the main components of clinical psychology in treating and preventing psychological problems for individuals and the broader community.
An interest in the psychopathology of society in this way would be a great addition to the developmental and health psychology courses I took at the University of North Carolina at Asheville. I look forward to working with the core teaching team of the program. In particular, working with Brent Robbins in social psychology will allow young scientists like myself to learn and apply the skills of quantitative and qualitative research in clinical psychology.
I intend to spend my professional life researching why so many individuals remain bound by their shackles. That requires posing many traditional and fundamental issues about psychotherapy and social action. The reality challenges the psychosocial mission that psychotherapy treatments are not universally progressive in their politics or consequences. Indeed, most psychotherapy criticism has focused on the conformism ingrained in its ideas and methods, ranging from feminism to critical theory.
The social component of the psychosocial subject is often overlooked in modernist epistemologies, which imply the possibility of competence, integration, and individual self-development. Instead, I am interested in societal and personal transformation concerns, regardless of the degree to which that change has resulted from treatment. I do not commit to any specific method of psychotherapy or even to psychotherapy as a primary good, which it may or may not be.
My goal in conducting doctoral research is to deepen my knowledge of the discrepancy between my intersubjective perception of reality and the objective one with which I battle daily. I do this with the intention of discovering something that may help others better understand themselves. I wish to contribute to realizing one potential over another, promoting a social order defined by more significant degrees of freedom and more equal interpersonal connections.
We shouldn’t strive to establish these connections through coercion or its inverse, control, but instead through participation and empowerment based on the values of justice and human dignity. I aspire to become a “good-enough” psychotherapist, in Winnicott’s words, so I can give someone the chance to grasp hidden or lost meanings. Re-own them, recover them, and be empowered to tell their own stories and reflect in a way that enables these life stories to be owned, understood, and used in the service of one’s liberation.
Philosophical and Theoretical Foundations
I drew heavily from humanism, critical theory, Gramsci, Foucault, and various feminist viewpoints because they struck a chord that reverberated throughout my intellectual and emotional search for self-understanding and direction. They expressed what I had personally experienced and elaborated on my attempts to interpret and make sense of my own experience. For instance, Schultz’s idea of phenomenology supports my conviction that all knowledge is relative and normative and that empirical facts and data can only be understood when considered in the context of values and norms.
My desire to believe that we can freely choose the values and presumptions from which we identify reality aligns with the Freirean philosophy of consciousness, empowerment, and humanism. My idea of the intensity of the fight we must engage in, both collectively and individually, to be able to make the decisions that lead to our maximum self-realization, is expressed in various ways by Gramsci and Foucault. Finally, feminism directly confronts my personal experience of female oppression.