Rewriting therapeutic failure : ethics, aesthetics and politics in the critique of psychology’s institution : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology at Massey University, Manawatū, New Zealand
| dc.confidential | Embargo : No | |
| dc.contributor.advisor | Morgan, Mandy | |
| dc.contributor.author | Figueira Menezes, Jerônimo Vicente | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2025-08-04T23:28:22Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2025-08-04T23:28:22Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2025-08-03 | |
| dc.description.abstract | This thesis developed from an interest in questioning the boundaries of psychological understanding and its inquiry and practice frontiers. The research project initially intended to take personal accounts of failure in psychotherapy as a means of mapping psychology’s conceptual and applied boundaries. However, embracing an emergent procedure inspired by schizoanalysis — informed by Deleuze and Guattari’s contributions — and drawing on elements of institutional analysis, existential cartography, Foucauldian theory, and philological inquiry, the work shifted from a narrow focus on individual narratives to a broader critique of the institution of psychology. This shift surfaced from confronting the risk of reductionist individualisation, in which psychology’s pre-formatted modes of investigation both control and limit the scope of understanding. At a fundamental level, failure embodies a gap between expectations and outcomes, along with an acknowledgement of limitations in methods, proficiency, or feasibility. There is an extensive body of research on failure in psychotherapy, focused on a wide range of isolated and non-comparable protocols, sometimes without fully recognising their own contextual limitations. These studies produce conflicting assessments due to psychology’s diverse and situated knowledge production systems. Irreconcilable gaps between three personal accounts of failure collected in interviews and the prescriptive structures of psychological theories/protocols further articulate the silencing of complexity and subjectivity that repeatedly emerge in therapeutic encounters. Even so, failure necessarily takes on local configurations with varying degrees of objectivity and subjectivity, in assemblages with a range of disparate elements — possibly including metatheoretical principles, the commodified dissatisfaction of therapy consumers, and any further influences bridging abstract and concrete domains. Such configurations of failure are often treated as structural realities, becoming the restrictive focus of scholarly analysis and resulting in self-referential practices. This thesis offers a performative academic critique that moves beyond these analytical confines. Written as what is termed a trapizonga, it presents an adaptive ethico-aesthetic-political critique of the institution of psychology. As the embodiment of a relational and immanent ethos, attentive to the collective struggles of living together, and performing a minoritarian and parrhesiastic arrangement of the sensible, this trapizonga offers a reflexive account of the broader failures embedded in psychology’s institutional and therapeutic limitations. | |
| dc.identifier.uri | https://mro.massey.ac.nz/handle/10179/73286 | |
| dc.publisher | Massey University | |
| dc.rights | © The Author | |
| dc.subject | institutional critique, schizoanalysis, failure in psychotherapy, subjectivity, ethics of care | |
| dc.subject | Foucault, Michel, 1926-1984 | |
| dc.subject | Deleuze, Gilles, 1925-1995 | |
| dc.subject | Guattari, Félix, 1930-1992 | |
| dc.subject | Psychotherapy--Failure | |
| dc.subject | Psychology--Philosophy | |
| dc.subject | Psychology--Moral and ethical aspects | |
| dc.subject.anzsrc | 520302 Clinical psychology | |
| dc.title | Rewriting therapeutic failure : ethics, aesthetics and politics in the critique of psychology’s institution : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology at Massey University, Manawatū, New Zealand | |
| thesis.degree.discipline | Psychology | |
| thesis.degree.name | Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) | |
| thesis.description.doctoral-citation-abridged | This doctoral research examined how psychology deals with failure in therapy. It showed how standard approaches can limit how people are understood. Through interviews and philosophical reflection, the study offers a fresh ethical, aesthetic, and political perspective on care, challenging hidden assumptions and inviting more open, relational, and creative ways of thinking about psychological practice. | |
| thesis.description.doctoral-citation-long | This research investigated how psychology approaches “failure” in therapy, showing how established therapeutic practices often constrain how people’s experiences are understood and valued. Through interviews, theoretical exploration, and self-reflection, the study offers a broad critique of psychology as an institution. Drawing on philosophy and institutional analysis, it shows how therapy often silences difference, narrowing which forms of life are recognised as understandable or legitimate. The thesis makes an original contribution by offering an ethical, aesthetic, and political rethinking of psychological knowledge that values relationality, challenges taken-for-granted institutional assumptions, and invites new ways of understanding the limits and possibilities of care. | |
| thesis.description.name-pronounciation | ZHE – ROH – NEE – MOH FEE – GAY – RA MEH – NEH – ZESS |
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