Conceptual Orientation and Theoretical Positioning.

Over many years, I have sustained an engagement with psychoanalytic theory and dissociation studies. I approach these domains through the lens of systems psychodynamics, conceptualising psychic life as relational, dynamic, and internally organised. My research interest centres on the formation and development of identity, with particular attention to how representations of self are generated, organised, and transformed.

Representational Modalities and the Construction of Self.

Representations of self may take visual forms — including drawings, paintings, photographs, and collages — as well as word-based forms such as poetry, prose, plays, and narrative texts. Within this enquiry, such creative productions are understood as representational artefacts that give form to internal psychic configurations.

Psychic States, Relational Dynamics, and Meaning-Making.

These configurations such as ego-states, self-states, and role-states are conceptualised as complex internal psychic constructs, containing conscious lived experience alongside tacit and unconscious material. These states exist in dynamic, reciprocal relationships with one another and engage in ongoing internal discourse. Simultaneously, they remain in continuous interaction with the external world, which informs and reshapes internal meaning-making processes.

Through this relational activity, psychic states are understood to co-constitute one another within the psychic system. The quality and organisation of these internal relationships contribute significantly to the development of identity, the articulation of values, and the individual’s capacity for agency, realisation (to be in reality) and  personalisation (to self-recognise), two critical charactoristics of a healthy psychic system.

Trauma, Disruption, and Dissociative Organisation.

Exposure to trauma and sustained anxiety disrupts the free-associative relational field between internal states. Prior to trauma, these states participate in a broad internal discourse that may be fluid or faltering, collaborative or conflictual, yet always remains active and self referencing.

Trauma fundamentally alters this internal ecology. It introduces paradoxical dynamics both within and between psychic states, resulting in processes of compaction, isolation, and defensive enclosure. Free association is curtailed, discourse diminished, and dissociation replaces relational exchange. Traumatised and dissociated individuals often exhibit de-realisation, a loss of a sense of location and de-personalisation, a loss of self-recognition. This shift marks a significant disruption in psychodynamic structure.

The psychodynamic analysis of this movement back from this dissociative structure to one of a free association of states related through story, narrative and representations of reengagement, constitutes the central focus of my doctoral research.

Creative Expression as Methodological and Integrative Practice.

To explore these psychic states and explore the process of reintergration, I developed an approach termed Creative Expression. This approach synthesises principles from creative arts therapy and expressive therapies and functions as both a methodological orientation and an exploratory practice.

Creative Expression facilitates the production of two and three-dimensional forms, the elaboration of personal narratives, and the emergence of re-authored accounts of self. The process is grounded in an arts-based, multimodal methodology driven by bilateral stimulation, supporting whole-brain and whole-mind engagement as a psychophysiological and psychic integrative process.

Re-Integration, Reflexivity, and Psychic Re-Occupation.

Multimodal representations draw upon multiple neural networks and are capable of holding complex mental spaces and lived experience. These representations exist in reflexive relationship with one another — revisited, reworked, and reinterpreted over time.

Through this process, the research explores how enclosed psychic territories may be re-occupied, how defensive structures may soften, and how internal states can reconnect and re-enter relational dialogue. This work attends to the conditions under which psychic integration becomes possible.

Knowledge Production and Situated Sharing.

Selected creative representations are shared on this page as part of this ongoing enquiry. This work reflects both a research trajectory and a personal commitment to creativity, reflexivity, and the exploration of lived experience. 

Theoretical Explorer

Am I walking 

                   through life

                                 …or Dancing

             Back to 

My Creative World