The year, 1996, didn’t start well. My then-partner and I went to Spain, with three friends, for a Christmas break. For some reason we thought it would be shining hot. As it turned out, we spent a week in a wet, damp bungalow in the middle of nowhere. The main thing I remember were the Spanish tortillas on the few days we got out—wet and damp as well, with burnt soggy potatoes at the bottom.
My PhD viva was on Friday the 6th Jan—25 years from the publication of this post (more details on what a PhD viva is are available here). I’d read through my thesis a few times and felt fairly well-prepared. It was a somewhat unusual topic, Facilitating the expression of subpersonalities through the use of masks: An exploratory study. Basically, during my undergraduate studies I’d gone to a mask workshop run by a friend of mine at Oxford University and been amazed at the power of masks to bring out different ‘sides’ of my self (or ‘subpersonalities’). I researched it further for an undergraduate paper and then, in the early 1990s, applied to Sussex University to do a PhD on the topic. Basically, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do as a career—either media (TV, journalism) or academia—and, as I couldn’t find a way in to media work, I thought I’d do the latter, particularly when I was awarded a grant from Sussex University to support me. That’s when I also started counselling training: I thought I better to do something practical alongside the PhD.
The internal examiner for the viva was a tutor of mine from my undergraduate days and someone who I knew fairly well. The external examiner was an academic in humanistic psychology I didn’t know much about, but had read a couple of her books and they seemed interesting. The three of us sat that Friday in the internal examiner’s office: dark and small, with his bike leaning against the bookshelves.
I remember more about after the viva than the viva itself. But the questions came quickly and they felt pretty intense from the start. ‘Why was I writing about subpersonalities?’ ‘What evidence was there for them?’ ‘What made me think they were a legitimate basis for a PhD?’ ‘Why was I so dependent on the work of John Rowan, what about my own thoughts?’ I answered the questions as best I could, wondering if that was how vivas were supposed to be—anxious that, perhaps, this was more critical than normal. After about 90 minutes I was asked to leave and sat in the Department common room—somewhere I’d spent many hours as an undergraduate socialising and relaxing in. I felt a rising anxiety from the pit of my stomach. I’d done my best, but something felt wrong. One of my other undergraduate tutors passed by and asked me how things had gone. He said he was sure it would all be fine: no one got failed for their viva. I wasn’t so sure.
Called back in the darkened room, like a death sentence. They had, indeed, decided to fail the thesis. Well, not quite fail it, but they were proposing that I resubmit for an MPhil: the next to lowest outcome. The main thing I remember was crying. I think it was an armchair I was sitting in, in a corner of the room. Sobbing away. Couldn’t believe it, even though I’d felt it coming. I went to see my supervisor and told him the news. Then I walked and walked and walked to a nearby village. Bought some cigarettes for the first time in years, rang my closest friend from a red call box and just smoked and smoked. There was nothing else I could do.
I came back to campus and went to see my supervisor again. He said that the examiners had decided that, in fact, I could have another chance to resubmit for a PhD: one outcome higher. But it would require a complete rewrite—four years’ work down the drain!
I met my partner at our house near Brighton station. Then we went to the pub. A few pints and I felt better, but I knew it was just temporary. Back home, as the alcohol wore off, the reality of the situation smashed back in my face. And so many questions: ‘Why had I failed?’ ‘Why had my supervisor said to me, just the day before the viva, that the work was “excellent”?’ ‘Were they ever likely to pass it even if I did spend the next three years rewriting?’ More than anything, I just didn’t understand what was wrong with the work, why they had failed it. The examiners obviously, clearly, really didn’t like it. But why?
That weekend was probably the worst of my life. I hardly slept the Friday night, just terrible feelings of anxiety and worry. Thinking over and over again what had gone wrong. A few hours sleep, then pub the next day and again some temporary relief. Then walking, walking, walking with my partner—along Brighton seafront—trying to make sense of things and work out ways forward. A game of pool in a pub in Hove. Slow walk back along the Western Road. I bought some aftershave at a chemist in Seven Dials that was my favourite for many years. Back home in the silence and the pain of it all. Moments alone were the worst, when my partner went to sleep. Several serious suicide attempts over the next few days. I won’t go into details, but suffice to say that it was just the terror of the pain, and the thought of having—and meeting my—children in the future, that held me back.
It wasn’t just failing my thesis. It was where I was in life. Basically, I was 30, had been struggling for years to work out what I wanted to do. Had been watching so many family members and friends succeed in their careers. I felt like I was going nowhere. The one thing I had was this PhD and the possibility of being an academic, and now even that was in tatters. It was the last closed door in a series of closed doors. The last possibilities I’d been hanging out for.
One of the worst things was that I had to run seminars for the psychology undergraduate students the next week. I felt so totally and utterly ashamed: surely everyone would know about my failure, and then how could they possibly take anything I said seriously? I drove in that Wednesday, facilitated the class as best I could. It didn’t help that the internal examiner was the module coordinator. I spoke to him as well on the phone on the Monday. He was sorry to hear I was feeling so awful. He tried to explain what had happened but it just didn’t make any sense. More questions, not less.
I was teaching psychology at Brighton University as well at that time, and was so grateful that the programme coordinator there didn’t seem to flinch when she heard the news. She still trusted me, let me continue my teaching. In fact, that summer, when she moved on, I was offered her job, and started in a more permanent position at Brighton University.
Something had already seemed to turn, though, before that time. I felt a bit better by April. I had a new supervisor now (one of the conditions for me being allowed to resubmit): a professor from my undergraduate years that I really trusted. He was down-to-earth, grounded, gave me hope. But it was a whole new thesis, and three more years before I finally completed.
What Went Wrong?
So why had things gone so badly wrong? Had my supervisor let me down, was it that the examiners had been unfair, or had I just done a really poor piece of work? It took me months, maybe even years, to work out. But now I’d understand it something like this: When I started the work, I was doing it in the field of cultural studies. It was about masks, and with a fairly relaxed design: I was drawing on literature, ethnography, drama therapy. There was no stringent method, but that seemed fine for that field of study and others who wrote a thesis in a similar way had done fine. But then, about halfway through my programme, we’d shifted my registration to Psychology. My supervisor, I think rightly, wanted me to come out with a doctorate in psychology so that I could use that if I wanted to go into psychology as a profession—for teaching or clinically. But the problem was, the focus or content of my thesis hadn’t really changed. So my examiners, who were fairly classical psychologists, thought the whole thing was just off the wall. Far too a-methodological, no real use of systematic methods or analysis. As a psychology thesis yes, they were right, it didn’t meet expected standards. But I had no idea what those standards were. And somehow my supervisor had never seen that coming. And I guess I hadn’t too. There were warning signs. For instance, I presented at my psychology department’s seminar series and I could see that they weren’t too taken by being asked to wear masks and to move around in them, but I hadn’t wanted to see the problems. And I should have pushed harder for a second supervisor. I did ask, and it was discussed, but I let it go and thought it would all be OK.
What’s the Learning?
I guess, as with all awful things, there was a lot of learning. That experience has stayed with me throughout my life. I still go back to that pub by Brighton station every so often to sit and reflect and thank something or someone for, in the end, making things OK. And I’d do that again tonight if it wasn’t for COVID. Somehow, amazingly, within ten years of that viva I was a professor of counselling at a prestigious university in Scotland: something, sitting back there in 1996, I could never have even hoped for. When I go back to the pub, I kind of ‘talk’ to my 1996 self and tell him that things are going to be OK in the end, and to hang on in there. And it’s nice, in some ways, to have that chat with him and reflect on where things ended up. He’d have been so happy and relieved.
As a Student
One thing that I really did that was wrong was to isolate myself away from any academic community while I was working on my PhD. I never went to conference, or engaged with departmental seminars, or submitted to journals. And just the one time I did present, as above, I didn’t stay open to how people were responding. I was in my own little bubble, and that wasn’t shattered until my actual viva. I think I did that because I was scared: worried that others wouldn’t be that interested in my work or feel it was good enough. But I made the classic mistake of avoiding, rather than facing up to, the thing I was afraid of.
As a Supervisor
I really try and be straight with my students if I think there’s problems. If I don’t think the work is at the right level, I’ll do my best to say it. Much better they hear it from me than from their examiners.
And when it comes to choosing an examiner for a student, I do think about the importance of ‘alignment’. This is not about finding someone who will simply waive the thesis through; but finding someone who has some of the same basic assumptions and expectations as the student and the supervision team. Most psychologists would probably fail a cultural studies PhD if it was submitted as psychology. And, similarly, I imagine that many cultural studies academics would fail a psychology PhD for reasons—like lack of epistemological, cultural, and personal reflexivity—that traditional psychologists might never consider. So there’s a reality that, in the academic world, there’s lots of different sets of expectations and assumptions; and it seems essential to me that students are assessed in terms of what they are trying—and supported—to do.
These days, most universities (certainly Roehampton) have a minimum of two supervisors for doctoral work, and that’s absolutely key to ensuring that it’s not dependent on just one academic’s views. We do our best, but our blind spots are, by definition, blind spots. Really getting an honest second opinion on student’s work—triangulation—makes it much less likely that things will go off track.
As an Examiner
I’m still angry at my examiners. Fair enough, they didn’t like the work and didn’t think it was at doctoral standards. But, they were so critical, so personal about the problems in the thesis. The external examiner, in particular, felt just ‘mean’ at times. When my new supervisor and I wrote to her, while I was revising, just to check I was along the right lines, she wrote a response that felt so demotivating and unclear. It just wasn’t needed. So when I’m a doctoral examiner now, even if I feel more work needs to be done, I try and do it supportively and warmly—with kindness, sensitivity, and empathy.
There’s also something about acknowledging the multiplicity of perspectives on things. As an examiner, I have to give my perspective on what I think is doctoral standard, I can’t ever be entirely objective; but I can acknowledge it as my perspective. You can criticise something without criticising the person behind it.
As a Person
I guess one of the best things that came out of this whole period of my life is that I’ve never taken my job for granted. I feel incredibly privileged to have had a chance to work and teach: just seeing students, writing emails—it’s amazing to have this role and this opportunity with others. I still, deep down, don’t believe that I would/will ever have it.
I guess the downside of this, which has not been so great for relationships and, perhaps, as a father, is that I’m still so focused on work. If I don’t do a set number of hours each day, I start to feel almost shaky and that I’m letting work down. I’ve worked, maybe, 55 hour per weeks for the last twenty or so years. Rarely taken my full annual leave. And that’s, in part I’m sure, because I’m still haunted by the ghost of that experience. My 1996 self still regularly tells me ‘You’ll never have a job’, ‘You’ll never be part of a work team,’ ‘You’ll always be a failure and outside of things.’
Something else at the edges of my awareness: when I look back, I realise how much I had to contribute at that time. So much passion, energy, commitment. I really wanted to make a difference. And it was so, so hard to—not just with the PhD but as a young person struggling through their 20s who didn’t quite fit into the social structures. And it makes me think about how much of that energy gets wasted in our young people: so much passion, drive, and creativity that is blocked, that doesn’t have an outlet. It’s such a burning frustration for those young people, and such a waste for our society as a whole.
Concluding Thoughts
I still feel shaky, and then some relief, reflecting on this time. I’ve never written about it before and perhaps there’s still more to process in therapy. Just that sheer, pounding, devastating sense of failure and shame. But there’s also something profoundly uplifting about it. How you can be right at the very bottom of things, utterly hopeless, but if you stick with things and keep going despite then it can get better and amazing things can happen. I’d love to say ‘trust the process’ or that, in some way, that failure led to subsequent successes; but in many ways I think I was just incredibly, incredibly lucky that things worked out ok. Part of me, maybe that 1996 part, believes (or, perhaps, knows) I could still be struggling away. And I do feel like I’ve been amazingly lucky and blessed in my career and in my life: more than anything, four beautiful, gorgeous children.
Out of the storm, chaos, and anguish of life, there’s still the possibility of some incredible things emerging. Things can change. Even when we’ve totally given up on hope, hope and possibility may still hold out for us.
Acknowledgements
I am deeply indebted to Helen Cruthers, James Sanderson, and the friends and colleagues who helped me through that time in my life.
Very special thanks to Christine Aubrey—I will always be so grateful.
Thanks also to Yannis Fronimos for feedback and encouragement on this article.
A condensed version of this article was published in the BACP publication Therapy Today and can be downloaded here. Thanks to Sally Brown for her superb editing and condensing of the post.