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             Dante was right - heaven and hell are about circles.  The circling that brought me to West Georgia runs around a life-long appreciation for psychology as philosophy, science, social heuristic, and treatment modality, but mostly as a path through life.  Here are some milestones along that path.

             I read Skinner and Frankl and Anne Frank and Ayn Rand in high school, graduated at 16, tripped intentionally on the stage after being handed my diploma, and that was that.  Then it was on to undergraduate and masters work in psychology at BYU, and there’s not much to say about that other than I learned a great deal and was much more certain of pretty much everything then than I am of pretty much anything now.  A year of work as a school counselor and psychologist followed, then a move to Tennessee to do my Ph.D. in Counseling Psychology.  Counseling Psychology is that applied psychology branch that purports to facilitate the development of normal persons throughout the lifespan, and sometimes we do. At Tennessee I was far more interested in social philosophy, Freud, struggles with educational praxis, and upstream psychology than in organizing my responses to client material along Carkhuff’s four levels of empathy, but somehow survived.  I wrote a grant to do my dissertation research in Mexico and spent 1987 at the Universidad Autonoma de Yucatan in Merida, where Diane and I, our daughters Lisa and Marianne, our parrot Carlos, and our 1973 VW Bus had a magical and transformative time of it.  Internship at Vanderbilt and the Nashville VA was wonderfully consolidating, and I began to appreciate the mutually healing power of courageous involvement with others.

             I continued my academic career as a new assistant professor in the psychology department at Texas Tech University for my first five years, where I enjoyed fine colleagues and wonderful students and taught assessment and theory and accompanied many bright and gracious students in their research and practice efforts.  In 1993 my family and I moved to Auburn, where I was Director of the counseling psychology doctoral program for six years and enjoyed similar associations.  Kind and gentle and bright students at Auburn told me about this wonderful place in Carrollton that seemed consonant with my way of being as a psychologist and teacher and person, and when the opportunity came to spend 1999-2000 here on sabbatical I was eager to do so.  And here I stayed.

It has taken me a long while to claim participation in psychology as more than an intellectual or pedagogical arms-length exercise.  Many of my early research forays and an unfortunate few of my thousands of clinical hours were grounded in psychology as science rather than psychology as relationship.  These days I am inclined to view my teaching and my research and my practice work as about relationship, and I hope to spend the rest of my vocation (ety: “calling”) in psychology being in happy and struggling relationship with companion ideas and people.  My present teaching interests include upstream and mainstream psychology, personality and psychotherapy theory, assessment, and research methods.  Research interests are largely outgrowths of my collaboration with similarly curious students and faculty colleagues.  And I continue to try to learn the lessons of clinical involvement from my client companion “victims and tormentors” (Freud) and teachers and fellow strugglers (Kunkel).  Circles.

My celebration of life’s struggles in addition to psychology includes being burned daily in the refining fire of family life, finding meaning in running (I’ve done 30 or so marathons and ultramarathons, trail races from 31 to 100 miles in length), and listening in appreciatively and contributing to the human voice in music.
 

Influential Works

 

As for books, I am inclined to view them as punctuation of the comma and question mark (and rarely the exclamation point) variety rather than the period sort, consistent with Szent-Gyoergyi: “There is a common misperception of books.  It is thought that they are something the contents of which are to be crammed into one’s head.  But I think it is just the opposite: Books are there to keep the knowledge in while we use our heads for something better.”  So, some of many books that have been exclamation points and helped me use my head and heart better in my circling journeys:

 

Cousineau, Phil - The Art of Pilgrimage: The seeker’s guide to making travel sacred.
             Cloyingly new-agish in places, this book is also occasionally breathtakingly profound in speaking to pilgrimage and our journeys in life.

Frankl, Viktor - Man’s search for meaning.
             Life as “provisional existence of unknown limit.”  Yep.

Franz, Carl - The peoples’ guide to Mexico: Wherever you go, there you are.
             Carl gets at the essence of involvement in groups and has been my companion on various life journeys. Carlos the parrot is named after him.

Freud, Sigmund - Works.
             Much of my thinking about personality and culture and psychotherapy and society is grounded in Freud.  I claim him gratefully as a fellow struggler.

Girard, Rene - Violence and the sacred.
             This exclamation point has punctuated my work around desire and groups and blaming and myth and all other kinds of stuff.  I consider Girard revolutionary.

Greenson, Ralph - The technique and practice of psychoanalysis.
             This is the authoritative treatise on psychoanalytic work and a fine overview of relevant theory and formulation as well.

Havens, Leston -  Making contact, A safe place.
             Leston writes with clarity and passion about psychotherapy from an interpersonal perspective and I plagiarize him shamelessly in my work whenever possible.

Kahn, Michael - Between therapist and client: The new relationship.
             Kahn’s is the book I recommend most frequently to beginning therapists as a helpful map of the frightening territory.  It’s wonderful.

Kohut, Heinz - The analysis of the self, How does analysis cure.
             Father of so-called Self Psychology, Kohut writes a radical and clinically helpful revision of Freud.  I lean on his formulations gratefully in my teaching and clinical work.

Lindbergh, Anne Morrow - Gift from the sea, Bring me a unicorn.
             If art comes from struggle Lindbergh qualifies as an artist.  I appreciate her honest and unapologetic celebration of life’s struggles.

Rogers, Carl - On becoming a person.
             Worth it for the first chapter alone, I consider this book almost without peer as an example of one not only to read, but to “be read by.”

Skinner, B.F - Walden two.
             For what is love, but another term for positive reinforcement? Or vice versa.”  Something else to be read by.

West, Cornel - Race matters.
             West writes a perspective on struggles for tolerance and kindness and prizing that has been an aspirational ethic in my loving and working.

 

Mark Kunkel, Ph. D.

 

Wednesday Matters Presentation
 Curriculum Vitae

E-mail:  mkunkel@westga.edu
Phone:  678-839-0621
Office:  Melson 210