Can a Thesis be Too Personal?
You’ve landed in the exact intersection of my therapy training and my research experience, which is, we are never not bringing ourselves with us - to our writing, to our research, to our work.
There was once this idea in therapeutic work that a therapist was a blank slate for the patient to project their worries, stories, and what they called neurosis onto. And that the therapist was there as a sort of a mirror for that, a reflection back to the patient.
And people didn’t originally think of that reflection back as the therapist being a fun-house mirror, a sort of distorting of the patient’s experiences through their own (therapeutic training, yes, but personal experiences too). People thought it was a true reflection and not filtered through the personhood of another.
Now we know that to not be true.
If you went to a therapy session in the early weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns, you might have experienced this acutely. You might have noticed sessions being unusual or off or ‘not as productive’ because your therapist was also navigating their first pandemic with you. The larger world made its way into your sessions, even if your therapist was showing up the best they could and did not take up time in your session for their personal lives, right.
Your therapist couldn’t show you your world back to you, without their experience of the world, too. (Whether that was a moment of commiserating with you, challenging some thoughts of misinformation, or discussing health behaviors that we’re learning at the same time as you)
Even a therapist who says politics don’t matter in the therapeutic relationship or their identities don’t matter is reflecting the world back to you filtered through their world view.
And research is no different.
Each researcher is the same fun-house mirror of reflecting findings, methods, and knowledge that therapists are to their patients.
And I think the therapist who doesn’t contend with how their worldview impacts their work is equally as harmful as a researcher who denies that who they are as a person impacts their work.
It’s why I don’t understand academia’s obsession with pretending humanity, stories, emotions, personhood doesn’t show up in research and science.
We used the term ‘skin envelopes’ (which I personally think is gross to be honest) in my graduate school training to describe the ways our minds can change internally as we learn new things and explore the world in more depth but we still bring our thoughts, emotions, and experiences with us because our bodies are never without our brains.
It’s always seemed like academics and researchers tried to ignore that reality.
But one only has to ask the experience of two opposing sports teams on a championship game about what 3-7 score means to know that numbers, facts, carry stories and meanings.
And that who the person reporting on the score is matters because there are many stories to be told about 3-7. I mean I can think of at least four off the top of my head - a story of a underdog, a story of a reigning champion, a story of both teams not making the most of the game, a story of a coach’s final season. Same 3-7 score.
To finally get directly to your thesis question: a thesis is already personal. It’s always personal. Whether people acknowledge it or not.
And in my opinion, it should be acknowledged. A positionality statement at minimum should be required.
I quoted Dr. Renee Linklater from in Decolonizing Trauma Work in my first chapter of my dissertation that lays out who I was at the time of writing this work: “First, we write our own stories and share our position in the world before we write about the world. This is a big task because first we have to come to terms with who we are and how we come to do the work that we do..”
I’d encourage you first to write a positionality statement for yourself. Be as truthful as you can able your why, your worldview, your personal experiences, your professional experiences, your story. It’s not work void of emotions so don’t try to do it all in one sitting or as an afterthought. Give yourself adequate time, space, and comfort to explore this.
Then I’d encourage you to talk to your supervisor or advisor and ask about how positionality statements have been interpreted and treated in the past. You don’t have to share what you wrote at this time. Rather open up a dialogue, a conversation, and see how they respond and ask if the university has a policy or anything around its inclusion.
After you have that information, I would say it’s probably reflection time. It’s time to consider what part of your personhood and story is necessary for those engaging with your work to know, how you can include that in your thesis, and what sort of support you might need in doing so (depending on how a conversation with your supervisor and advisor goes).
I took up some three thousand words of my thesis to tell my examiners who I was, what vantage points I was entering these conversations from, what background led me to make certain choices in these studies, and the context of what was happening in the world while this work was being undertaken.
That may not be the right choice for you nor may it be what is allowed in terms of structure and word count.
However, I would encourage you not to make this a choice of comfort. As in, don’t decide to not include it if your advisor gives you an answer of being unsure or like ‘well students typically don’t’. Don’t ignore your starting points for entering this work because it’s not (yet) a standard practice in your field. Your starting points, the authors you read, the training you pursued, the one sided beef you have with one of the thought leaders, that’s what your work is filtered through. And those contending with your work can understand it better and do more with it when they understand who you are and where you come from.
I know people have a fear of acknowledging who they are and how that impacts their work because academics of the past have run a wonderful (and targeted) campaign against personhood in research. But truth be told, we’re not better for it.
And every researcher, scientist, academic, and scholar who tells us who they are changes the tides for a more truthful, dynamic, engaging, and expansive academia.
Thank you for your part in that.
Til next Sunday,
Dr. Sydney Conroy
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