Resistance is useful

Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytic theory (Sayers 2021) talks of the interface between three parts of the psyche: the id, ego and superego. Often referred to as personal agency, some of us operate from all three parts of our mind make-up (our psyche), or some are solid in just one. These are the three types of agency:

1. The id is the child like part of us that wants something NOW - it is the inherited parts of us often born of trauma, socialisation or lack of growth opportunity.
2. The ego is the presentation of us as we are now - it is our sensible decision making self, forged from all that has happened to us but able to stand in our conscious values and principals as a grown up.
3. The superego is the moral influence on our behaviours - often called the critical parent it is the status quo of how we should behave according to social values enforced upon us.

Developing the ego is the gold standard in therapeutic interventions because it is the balancer of the id's demands and desires with the superegos moral compass full of "shoulds." (McLeod 2024)

Although there is much academic resistance to Freud's theory, it is nonetheless a seminal theory of personality...and it nicely illustrates my own resistance to a bad thing happening to many good people recently. After illustrating my own psychoanalytic responses to the bad thing, I will then locate resistance according to Professor Brene Brown's 6Ps of Change.

The history of the bad thing that happened to 15 13 Higher Degree by Research (HDR) students.

Our collective ids and superegos have been activated by losing the opportunity to keep our favoured and loved principal supervisor. I have lost four academic supervisors for my PhD in just twelve months. All were from the same university. Terribly unsettling and disruptive to my research plan. My, our, recent supervisor, an incredibly supportive and knowledgeable human in my area of research, resigned and worked her leave out. During her overseas leave, she continued with her weekly supervisions. To the university, she offered to stay post resignation from her main job as Dean to continue as an adjunct unpaid principal supervisor for the 15 HDR students she was supervising: some who had followed her from another university and some whom, like me, had lost previous supervisory panels. Her reasoning was so the HDR students could finish their research without disruption and to honour the contract of supervision with the students.

Two days before her leave ended and her resignation as Dean took effect, the university declined her offer to adjunct. The 15 13 students affected found out by email that she would not be supervising us anymore. My id immediately began itching to throw a tantrum and blame the university. My superego wanted to waggle my finger at the university and accuse them of neither looking after staff or their HDR students. Instead, my ego tells me that overcoming this major interruption is in my control. The supervisor had the right to resign. The university had the right to not accept her offer to act as an adjunct....no matter how devastated we all are by their decision.

The university emailed students and took it upon themselves to provide a new supervisory panel to students affected; without consultation, but, they do want to discuss options. At first I baulked at such a patriarchal suggestion (id). Then the waggle (the superego) wanted to act like the critical parent that it is and ground them for their perceived insolent adolescent behaviour designed to control me. My flight response activated, I wanted to run away to a different university where Professor Brabazon could be my principal supervisor. After sleeping on it, my emotional intelligence kicked in and my ego has emerged prepared to hear their suggestions: suggestions that I do not have to accept if they don't fit MY needs as a PhD student. I have agency in all of this.

I am writing up my research and this problem with university staff resigning will be situated into the thesis. A colleague is writing her thesis on the division of labour to women academics. This recent data must be like mana from heaven to her and will no doubt feature in her thesis too. Both of us intend to publish, widely, and this will make compelling reading and secondary data for future HDR students.

Disappointed I am. Loyal I also am. I know what I want. I know what I need. I will listen to panel options and then make my decision. 

I am resistant to losing my supervisor. She has provided me weekly supervision and kept my research thinking on track through some tough personal times. I am willing to pay her myself to keep her on my supervisory panel...if she cannot be my principal supervisor then it is important that the principal the university suggests is able to work with Professor Brabazon.

This "payment" action is what Professor Brene Brown would call the power of purchase to effect change. I wrote about Brown's six Ps of change here in Resist or Protest Your Way, but briefly, here is comment on the Six Ps of Change.

We each resist differently. No one way is better than any other - it is about our own motivations, values and abilities to create change from where we are with what we have. In Brown's original research (2008) she located the six ways her participants engaged in change making:

1. Personal
2. Pens
3. Polls
4. Participation
5. Purchases
6. Protests

My preferred way of creating change is through participation - craftivism - the marriage of craft to activism to produce items or installations that carry a political, social or personal message. I love being involved with a group of crafters as we chat while crafting a collaborative, or individual, piece of resistance. In my home town on the Great Barrier Reef, I introduced yarn bombing to raise awareness of particular environmental issues.

Despite my preference, I also combine the other 6 Ps as required. Importantly, to illustrate further the P for purchase resistance tactic that I engage for gaining back my supervisor, during the 2023 Yes/No referendum in Australia I used my purchasing power to cease buying a favoured red wine produced by a corporate supporter and funder of the No side. 

No matter how we resist to create change, it is important that the ego is engaged and that we can clearly articulate our method of change. Scattergun or reactive id approaches are not always effective, unless organised and the collective uses what appears to be a scattergun approach when in fact they are organising members into the evidence based 6 P's of Change to reach a common goal.

I am using my purchases to achieve what I need. I am using pens by writing this blog and adding the problem to my thesis. I utilise participation and protest by joining in emotional solidarity with my 14 12 colleagues also negatively affected by the decision. There is currently a poll about who can attend a meeting with the executive. This is the six P's of change in action, born of research and enacted by HDR students against a superego who wants to enforce a moral code upon us by telling us who our principal supervisor will be.

My resistance in my way is useful. Your resistance in your way is useful. Together our resistance is powerful.

👩‍🦳 Megan Bayliss. Social Work Supervisor

👩🏻‍🎓 PhD candidate: Social and cultural resistance to the status quo.

References

Brown, B (2008). I thought it was just me (but it isn't). Avery: New York