Debbie Wright Debbie Wright
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Email
sr17548@essex.ac.uk -
Location
Colchester Campus
Profile
- Arts practice and mental health,
Biography
Stephen Rudder is a psychodynamic psychotherapist practising privately and within the NHS. He is an associate at the Department of Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies at the University of Essex, where his doctoral research examines the presence of a colonial social order within a Black male clinical dyad. Stephen is an award-winning audio-visual artist who explores mental health themes through collaboration with community groups, offering profound insights through his cross-disciplinary practice. He has been commissioned by organisations including UNESCO, the Wellcome Trust, Science Gallery International, and Kings College London. Building on this foundation, Stephen strives to enhance engagement between global majority people and mental health services and has developed and led several successful group projects, including Black Mens Minds, Hood Mentality, and Undisciplined Thought.
Research and professional activities
Thesis
Dynamics in the Black Male Dyad: Examining the Presence of a Colonial Social Order in the Clinical Situation
In psychoanalysis, there is a lack of literature examining its intersection with Black men. Existing literature under the umbrella of ‘race’ often focuses on cross-racial dynamics, in which either the patient or the therapist is white. However, this leaves a gap in psychoanalytic knowledge about what might occur in a psychoanalytic encounter in which both the patient and the therapist are Black men. I suggest that in the psychoanalytic consulting room, the interpsychic and interpersonal dynam
Supervisor: Debbie Wright , Ebenezer Cudjoe