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Patrick Johnson

Doctoral student
Image:
A photo of Patrick Johnson standing outdoors, smiling.

Patrick Johnson is a DPhil student at St Cross College whose work focuses on exploring depictions of psychological distress in classical literature and their potential relevance and worth regarding the understanding, diagnosis, and treatment of mental health today (particularly concerning the concept of ‘Moral Injury’). Having completed his BA at Durham and his MPhil at Cambridge (supervisor: Simon Goldhill), Patrick’s doctoral project is supervised by Fiona Macintosh and Constanze Güthenke from the Classics Faculty and Paul Šalkovskis from the Experimental Psychology department. Exploring the reciprocal relationship shared by Psychology and Classics, he is reviewing the work of Jonathan Shay as the most developed example of modern mental healthcare being informed by classical literature. Patrick is particularly interested in the ethical concerns arising from the employment of Greek tragedy in drama therapy and theatre therapy projects, looking into case studies from the 1950s to the present day.

Selected publications
  • Johnson, P. G. B. (2023). Looking Backwards for a Way Forwards: Greek Tragedy and its Classification of Mental States. Mediterranean Journal of Clinical Psychology, 11(1).
  • Johnson, P. G. B. (2024). Acting Out: a preliminary exploration of the ethical implications of using ancient Greek Tragedy as a means of Psychotherapy. Mediterranean Journal of Clinical Psychology, 12(1).