Doctoral dissertations
Group processes in multidisciplinary teams in mental health
PhD-student: Melanie De Boever
Summary: Working together in a multidisciplinary team in mental health care is very common. This form of collaboration arose partly from caregivers' need to work with people with (complex) problems (Skyberg & Innvar, 2020). Working with people who are (mentally) suffering arouses anxiety in caregivers (Menzies, 1960; Lacan, 2016; Verbeke, 2020), as well working with colleagues creates tension (Bion (1961). The question arises as to how a team deals with experiences of tension and anxiety. We explore these questions, among others, from the position of the intern in the team, based on case studies of MDTs and ethnographic research. This doctoral thesis aims to contribute to a better understanding of group dynamics in teams and how they relate to the handling of anxiety associated with clinical work. This can then contribute to developing reflective practices and navigating stalled team processes.
Keywords: group processes, multidisciplinary teams, qualitative research.
Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Reitske Meganck
Co-supervisor: Prof. Dr. Evi Verbeke
Duration of the research: October 2024 - October 2030
Recovery-oriented psychosis care and psychoanalytic ethics
PhD-student: Margot de Sloover
Summary: In contemporary psychosis care, recovery-oriented thinking serves as a key framework. Its principles are featured in numerous policy and vision documents, and a significant body of research also employs this concept. An important question that has been little explored concerns the challenges and opportunities associated with the practical implementation of recovery-oriented practices within mental health care. Principles such as promoting participation, connectedness, and agency are interpreted in various ways by different stakeholders (patients, families, professionals, organizations), which leads to diversity and contradictions.
This doctoral thesis aims to provide a deeper understanding of the complexity and ethical dimension of implementing recovery-oriented care through a combined qualitative and conceptual approach. We will investigate the opportunities, pitfalls, and tensions associated with its implementation in psychosis care. Additionally, we will examine the ethical challenges that arise in this process. This question will be approached from a psychoanalytic perspective, particularly through Jacques Lacan's discussion of the ethics of emptiness and the concept of negative psychoanalysis.
Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Stijn Vanheule
Co-supervisor: Prof. Dr. Evi Verbeke
Duration of the research: 2025-2029
A qualitative investigation of adolescent identity experiences in a neoliberal, capitalist world
PhD-student: Margaux Schoofs
Summary: Though a critical task across the lifespan, the development of a personal identity is widely recognized to be most salient for the adolescent. However, the conditions in which adolescents are required to develop their identity, are rapidly changing throughout the world (e.g., increasing urbanization, commercialization and technologization), concomitant with a pervasive, market-based, neoliberal and capitalist system. This is accompanied by and exacerbated by the exponential growth of social media in the last two decades, as well as the explosion of exposure to advertisements. Adolescents’ negotiation with increasingly complex social worlds has extensive psychological repercussions on their development, but qualitative investigation is still lacking. My research addresses this lack, as it utilizes qualitative methodologies such as thematic analysis, narrative analysis and discourse analysis to explore how adolescent identity experiences are embedded within and throughout current neoliberal capitalist socio-cultural conditions.
Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Reitske Meganck
Co-supervisor: Prof. Dr. Melissa De Smet
Duration of the research: October 2022 - October 2028
Psychosis and alienation
Summary: Sass (1992) argues that the history of modern psychiatry is closely tied to that of schizophrenia. The concept of alienation is often used to interpret aspects of psychosis (e.g., Deleuze & Guattari, 2010; Fanon, 2018; Goffman, 2022; Lacan, 1981; Laing, 1967; Oury, 1992; Pienkos & Sass, 2016). However, its relationship to psychosis remains contested. Some theorists view psychosis as a state of radical authenticity, while others see it as a form of estrangement from subjectivity (Sass, 1992). Rather than seeking a singular interpretation, this PhD compares these different theoretical perspectives to explore how they shape our understanding of the psychotic experience. Through this comparative analysis, the study aims to illuminate why psychosis is valued so differently across traditions and what this means for institutional approaches to mental health care.
key words: Alienation, mental health care, psychosis
Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Jasper Feyaerts
Duration of the research: February 2022 – February 2028
Radicalization and Islam: a(n) (not so) odd couple?
PhD-student: Amar El-Omari
Summary:
The 9/11 attacks and subsequent terrorist incidents in Europe have profoundly shaped our worldview and its relationship with Islam. Radicalization has become a defining marker, distinguishing those who may be perceived as straying from democratic values by embracing an alternative worldview, sometimes seen as conflicting with societal norms. The concept of homegrown terrorism refers to individuals who commit acts of violence driven by ideological beliefs, often linked to Syria travelers and the rise and fall of ISIS.
This PhD project examines radicalization through the perspectives of Syria travelers, drawing on Fethi Benslama’s concept of “the Supermuslim”. Using a qualitative research design, we conducted interviews with both practitioners and Syria travelers about their professional and lived experiences with radicalization. A psychoanalytic framework guides our approach, viewing radicalization not merely as disruptive behavior but as a meaningful symptom – an identity narrative that reflects deeper psychological and social dynamics.
Keywords: Radicalization - Islam - Qualitative Research
Supervisor: Prof. dr. Reitske Meganck.
Duration of the research: March 2021 – March 2027
Exploring Narrativity, Art and Social (dis)connection in the Process of Recovery after Psychosis
PhD-student: Emma Brijs
Summary:My doctoral research explores how writing and publishing function as potentially stabilizing practices in the recovery process after psychosis. From a Lacanian psychoanalytic perspective, I analyze how language and narrativity can contribute to the restoration of subjectivity and social connection. Psychosis is often characterized by a disruption of social bonds, where the experience of reality and meaning becomes fragmented and isolated. Through co-creative case studies with individuals who have written and published about their psychotic experiences, I examine how these practices not only serve as tools for expression and meaning-making but also help to restore social connections. Publishing, in particular, can mark a second transformation: a shift from the individual to the collective, where recognition, legitimation, and the breaking of stigma take center stage. Additionally, I study how atmospheres—the spatial and intersubjective context in which recovery unfolds—play a crucial role in this process
Keywords: psychosis, creativity, social connection
Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Stijn Vanheule
Co-supervisors: Prof. Kris Rutten, Prof. Stijn Vandevelde
Duration of the research: november 2022 - October 2026
The Formation of Subjectivity in Relation to Time: A Lacanian Perspective
PhD-Student: Li Zhuoxuan
Summary:
Principle I: Temporal experience is organized through the interweaving between the imaginary and the symbolic, namely, the premature human subject is captured by the Law and expressed as the tense of future anterior. Time is a constant anticipation and retroaction within the signifying chain.
Principle II: What is excluded from the marching of the signifying chain, is the Lacanian object (a) – the contour of this object of emptiness is delineated by the movement abovementioned. Thus, an inclusion by exclusion.
Principle III: This exclusion is related to one’s real being – the living body with the constancy of drives. The come-into-being of a subject is immanent to the negativization of what is excessively flowing through one’s body. In other words, death, should be constantly renewed.
Keywords: Temporality, drive, negativity
Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Stijn Vanheule
Paradoxical reality experience as a core feature of schizophrenia and psychotic disorders: a conceptual and qualitative empirical study
PhD-Student: Arthur Sollie
Summary: More than for any other pathology, the history of conceptualizing psychosis can be read as a history of failures to do so. Usually, such findings are seen as sobering proof that there is still a huge gap to be bridged between theories and actual psychosis. But one could also turn the question around: what if these failures already remind us of a problem that takes us right to the heart of psychosis itself, a problem that could, so to speak, "drive one mad"? This dissertation takes such a short-circuit as its working hypothesis. It does so in order to introduce a different point of view from which to evaluate both theory and psychosis.
The dissertation focuses specifically on psychoanalysis, phenomenological psychopathology, philosophy, and the conceptual works and testimonies of people with a history of psychosis.
Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Jasper Feyaerts
The patient doth complain too much? Creativity and passivity in the neurotic’s lament.
PhD student: Goedele Hermans
Summary: Psychoanalysis has always understood the neurotic complainer as taking up an active role in his or her own misery. Phenomenological and existential readings of the complaint also underline the activity that goes hand in hand with passive suffering. The widespread medicalization of psychological disturbances however seems to lead to a fully passive reading of the complaint. This research project focuses on the concept of the complaint as it has been shaped by psychoanalytic practice and thought. This analysis hopes to contribute to a better understanding of both the deadly repetitive character and the lively joyous dimension of the complaint, a dimension for which the theoretical structure of present-day mental healthcare leaves but little room.
Suprvisor: Prof. Dr. Jasper Feyaerts