The “i” in your PhD team: it is within (part 2)

This blog is a continuation on the theme of the “i” in the PhD team (i.e., being the PhD student). In a very non-academic and somewhat tongue-in-cheek piece, I revisit some old ideas from psychoanalytic (Jungian) analogy; specifically to alchemical transformations. This analogy to being in a forever coveted state of change. The constant desire to transform into something more valued or more pure. Valuable to whom, though? This reflects the deeper question, and the point I’m trying to convey.

As a recent student of psychology I am very much aware of the limitations of psychoanalytic theory in the 21st Century. However, it was not so long ago that I gained much personal insight by this light — it is therefore to Carl Jung’s perspective I have chosen to frame this specific blog. An odd choice for a PhD student, and certainly not a position I’d advocate using academically. Yet, metaphorically, Jung presents a rich imagery which can be borrowed from — including his close associations with alchemy.

Is that too kooky? Well, think upon the following for context, from a not-so-distant reach into the past. Sir Isaac Newton was famously obsessed by alchemy. Later still the French Royal Academy of Science debated the claims of transmutation as late as the 1850s. The London alchemical society was formed in 1912 to foster discussions between alchemists and chemists. The old and the new melting into the imagination, reawakened by the nuclear age. In other words, just one century ago, in the time of Freud and Jung, notions of alchemical transformation were not fully dismissed. That’s not to say it has scientific or serious academic merit today, but metaphorically this idea of transformation aids the point I wish to make here.

Being a PhD researcher involves extended periods of learning how to understand things differently. We are each inviting a process of change into our mode of being. Metaphorically (i.e., no more than analogously), the language of alchemy helps conjure images of how we invite in that change. Burning away excesses of information towards the essence of what is more true. Alchemically solidifying an idea or a philosophical position to give it a rigid form —i.e., a position that can resist incoming force. Alternatively, melting down a concrete idea that seems too strongly bonded together —i.e., to better differentiate aspects and see what sits between.

Other notions are also metaphorically physically transformative. Making matters more malleable; breaking things up; generalising a mass from specifics atoms; atomising from that mass of specificity. Better containing a paradigm; or building one anew. A constant transformation is going on, and matters are constantly being made stronger, to then be pulled asunder once more. In this context, is contemporary “systems thinking” logic really so different from claims in the alchemical past? Both seek to show inter-connectivity — “As above, so below” said Hermes Trismegistus in the Emerald Tablet. In my opinion, both are lost once paradoxical positions need to be contextualised, not connected. However, the point here is that once the scholar reads back into the history of scholarship, so do some lines begin to blur. Hence I raise this alchemical analogy, because it seems surprisingly useful to explain the constant state of change or transformation a PhD candidate goes through.

The level of analysis also becomes challenged once we acknowledge the student is both the subject and the object of change. Being simultaneously and necessarily both rigid enough to critically engage new ideas, yet fragile enough to be inevitably changed too. We are both the experimenter and the experiment. On the one hand, representing a constant need for clarity of perspective. Yet, on the other hand soon in need of burning away the peripheral aspects, or to be melted back into a primordial soup to enable whatever future progress may yet demand us to be. The supervisors in this context are necessarily less changed.

The “they” in this team (i.e., the supervisors, or the institution, or the journal we wish to publish in) are offering more clarity of the structures and frameworks that underpin the field of research you chose. “They” represents the necessary containment needed for a field of research to be defined. “They” do this by demanding we individually present argument and engage discourse from within that contained field.

Engaging with the “they” — or “them” (the others) — can be difficult discussions. Discussions that do not become easier, indeed once engaging with academia at large, it is harder still. That’s why the supervision team is so important; they can help. They increase the capability of the individual to endure challenge, learn to be the challenge, and so embrace change and be a contributing factor to bigger change.

That’s why “we” is a team; and the “I” in the team a discernible part. As a team we can operate within a safe psychological space — like a lab containing our discourse. I am free to test ideas in this safe place, and the odd explosion is tolerated by them, but most importantly the mistakes can be safely diffused. Trust is therefore a key ingredient in this process. Trust comes from behaving appropriately, learning to behave more academically, and being more visible at moments when doing something out of the norm. Trust in a personal metaphorical lab, which “they” too have access to.

The “I” in this team takes accountability for such introductions of novelty. The student makes errors responsibly, learns quickly, and moves forward. Safe to occasionally blow-up, melt-down, freeze over, or just sit stewing in one’s own juices (seemingly doing little, yet inwardly becoming realigned). For me at least, this is how I improve. I am constantly battling myself, and better is generally another light shone upon something to which I was blind. For this reason I tend to read and write my way clear of problems, and respond to every occasional nudge from my supervisory team.

Finally, let me reveal why the grand alchemical metaphor ultimately fails, and thereby succeeds. Change is a critical part of the PhD journey. You are inviting in new means to see, and to be. However, the alchemical fallacy was ultimately flawed because it sought change of the wrong kind. Gold is valued because it is rare, and therefore valuable to all who value it. However, it is materialistic. That is a poor substitute for the value of time; or the value in being with others. My phenomenology philosophical positioning would point to change, but also regard experience as a development and a direction toward something else. Experience in human terms, which is inseparable to our perspective set in a finite time. More valuable than gold is therefore our time. And what that time is best spent on, is something each of us builds our own laboratory around; in our own context and priority. This build, is something none of us can do better alone. Heidegger tells us that.

In Jungian terms change will be a dent to one’s ego. It will require persona to be unmasked, old shadowy corners to be revisited and overcome, and aspects of Self found by finding new ways to change one’s state of being. Such transformation is necessarily a destabilising experience. But enjoy that journey, and dare to admit you do not know. Work hard to earn the trust of those acting as guides along the way. Think laterally, be brave, but fail quickly and be better next time. It will be on that path the “i” in team is shown.

…to be continued