Tell us a little bit about your dissertation topic.

Choosing my dissertation topic was a journey in itself. Though the basic elements have remained the same – dogs, humans, dogs and humans – the topic has morphed in ways that I never thought it would. The most unimaginable change was that I am in fact going to interview actual humans as part of my method. But as usual, I have gotten ahead of myself. The working title for my dissertation is – On the Internet, Everybody Thinks I’m a Dog: A Depth Psychological Look at Dog Blogs. This title grew out of a popular cartoon from The New Yorker magazine that shows a dog sitting in front of a computer screen typing. The caption is “On the internet, nobody knows I’m a dog.” My dissertation will explore the reasons that humans blog as their dogs. Along the way, it will touch upon postmodern ideas of identity formation, the effect of computer-mediated communication on identity, the role of dogs as human companions, the phenomenology of dog blogging (e.g., what it feels like to blog as a dog), and the phenomenology of reading a dog blog (e.g., how the reader interprets the words of the dog). The most interesting part of the topic to me is the fact that most often humans are blogging as dogs who are speaking about how humans don’t understand what it means to be a dog. Chew on that for a few minutes.

How'd you become interested in this?

I love dogs. I prefer dogs to humans. My dog has a blog. It seemed a natural choice for a dissertation. If I have to go through the emotional ups and downs of writing a huge paper then I want to write about something I love. Dogs are it.

What have you learned from your studies in Depth Psychology that has been most enlightening to you as you move through your research?

One word – complexes, that about sums it up.  My studies of the complex have helped me immensely as I go through the process of writing my dissertation. To me, writer’s block is just another term for “complex”. I have learned a whole lot about myself and my complexes as I attempt to stay focused and motivated. Whenever I begin to hate dogs or feel like I never want to write about a dog again – I know I am in a complex and it is time to do some selfwork. At one point early on, I thought my topic was going to be how our complexes bring us into relationship with certain dogs. Though my topic has moved away from that specifically, I believe complexes will show themselves in various ways throughout the finished product.

  ALLIE SMITH, ONE OF OUR DISSERTATION STUDENTS

What's it like working with Dr. Sasser as your dissertation advisor?

I feel very fortunate to be able to work with Dr. Jenny Sasser. She is the type of intellectual that is very hard to find these days – a well-rounded one. She has a breadth and depth of knowledge in multiple subject areas. I will never forget the day at Pacifica when we went around the room and each of my classmates announced their dissertation topic. The ideas ranged from discussions on how to have a successful marriage, the soul of fire, the image of the mirror in the Harry Potter series, Jung’s typology, the gay body, and projection in the human/dog relationship. Dr. Sasser listened thoughtfully as each person spoke and then seemingly, off the top of her head gave extremely thoughtful feedback on each and every topic. More simply said, she knows a lot of stuff and I really dig that about her.

When you tell people about your dissertation topic, what has their response been?

Most folks respond with a question, “Do people really blog as their dogs?” Yup, they do. Not only is there an entire website created just to catalog dog blogs, there are also over 1,000 dog blogs worldwide. Once we get past that hurdle we most often get into a heated discussion of how the internet has changed the way we communicate with each other and there are many opinions on that topic. In general, I have gotten very good feedback when discussing the topic with other humans, on the other hand, my dogs don’t seem to think it is quite as interesting. For them, on the continuum of interest, dog blogs fall somewhere down near nail clipping and not anywhere near the other end of the scale with things like bacon and chasing rabbits.

Click here to read more about Dr. Jennifer Sasser, an adjunct at Pacifica Graduate Institute