Philip Cushman Research and Educational Fund

Philip Cushman, a moral and political luminary in the field of psychology, died on August 22, 2022, the victim of a hit-and-run accident.

 

A beloved teacher, scholar, and clinician, Phil is remembered for his rich analysis of how the self has been conceptualized in the field of psychology, along with his historical and critical exploration of the moral and political horizons of psychotherapy.

 

With the establishment of this endowed Fund, created to honor Phil and foster his moral imagination for the field of psychology, we will continue this critically important work for generations to come.

About the Fund

Through Philip Cushman’s teaching, research, mentorship, and practice, he called for a rigorous interrogation of the relationship between our configurations of self and the socioeconomic and political realities which they frequently reflect and reinforce. He called for psychology to develop the capacity to more closely consider fundamental human questions of justice and morality in its descriptions of human identity and its treatments for psychological suffering. Phil’s passion for teaching had everything to do with his belief that future generations must receive the type of investment, care, and challenge which would enable them to rise above being “maintainers of the status quo.” For good to be done in this world, particularly through the field of psychology, we must be engaged in a multigenerational project that upsets the complacency of and complicity of this helping profession and calls it to a deeper and greater standard. 

2025 Student Fellows

My scholarship seeks to understand purpose as a culturally-situated construct—one shaped by experiences and encountered in profoundly different ways depending on one’s social location and inner world...
Brenna Lincoln, Boston College, PhD (2027)

 
Brenna Lincoln
Brenna Lincoln
2025 Philip Cushman Scholarship Recipient
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Brenna Lincoln

Brenna Lincoln

2025 Philip Cushman Scholarship Recipient

Brenna Lincoln (she/her) is a doctoral candidate in Counseling Psychology at the Lynch School of Education and Human Development at Boston College. She holds both a master’s degree in Mental Health Counseling and bachelor’s degree in Applied Psychology and Human Development from Boston College.

Brenna’s research centers on the development of purpose, belonging, and mentorship among adolescents and young adults. She is especially interested in how sociopolitical and cultural contexts influence the process of purpose development. Her dissertation examines how undergraduate women understand their capacity to pursue purposeful careers while also meeting their basic needs. Clinically, Brenna primarily works with children and adolescents, with a particular focus on supporting anxious youth and their families.


 
Kate Stone
Kate Stone
2025 Philip Cushman Scholarship Recipient
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Kate Stone

Kate Stone

2025 Philip Cushman Scholarship Recipient

Kate is a 2025 graduate of Boston College, and an aspiring psychotherapist. She is deeply curious about life and the world, and finds a sense of grounding in reading, contemplating, and writing about the peculiar beauties of living. For Kate, the field of the psychological humanities serves as a revitalizing dimension through which her future clinical work—and, more broadly, her way of relating to life itself—can be approached with deeper fidelity to ethicality, the ineffable, and ontological capaciousness. 

Kate's research interests stem from a poietic unfolding catalyzed by her exposure to profoundly insightful works (including those by Philip Cushman) as well as the layered and lasting influence of her transformative mentors through the Center for Psychological Humanities and Ethics. Kate's current research emerges from her deepening passions for relational psychoanalysis, Mad Studies, existential philosophy, and depth psychology. She is currently working on two projects: one that interrogates the McDonaldization of imagination, and another that engages Schopenhauerian Pessimism to propel more compassionate ways of understanding and relating to suffering in clinical practice.

Philip Cushman changed the questions I ask of psychology—and of myself. It gave language to something I felt to be deeply true the moment I encountered his work: that cultural and economic forces embedded in daily life give rise to a form of selfhood divorced from the relational nature of humanity...
Kate Stone, Boston College, BA (2025)

Philip Cushman Lecture Archive

Orna Guralnik: Love and Ideology
Orna Guralnik: Love and Ideology
October 16, 2024
7:00-8:30pm
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Orna Guralnik: Love and Ideology

Orna Guralnik: Love and Ideology

October 16, 2024

7:00-8:30pm

Couples therapy, like individual therapy, can draw on multiple theoretical models of treatment. In this presentation, Dr. Orna Guralnik will draw on relational-psychoanalytic and systems approaches to couples work, while keeping in mind the ways in which larger socio-political factors infiltrate the privacy of intimate relationships. The move towards integrating psychoanalytic and cultural theory has introduced a significant change in the psychoanalytic world, responding to large scale cultural movements in today’s culture and in other academic disciplines. Dr. Guralnik's presentation will include clinical vignettes and videos demonstrating what it means to shift between these paradigms.

Former Philip Cushman Student Scholars

Sophia Shieh
Sophia Shieh
2024 Philip Cushman Scholarship Recipient
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Sophia Shieh

Sophia Shieh

2024 Philip Cushman Scholarship Recipient

“As a scholar who values theoretical, quantitative, and qualitative research rooted in lived experiences, I believe in a pluralistic approach to research methods and a commitment to community-based participatory action...”

Lydia Li
Lydia Li
2024 Philip Cushman Scholarship Recipient
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Lydia Li

Lydia Li

2024 Philip Cushman Scholarship Recipient

“The spirit of this research is akin to Philip Cushman's impactful legacy by being interdisciplinary, drawing from Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology and applying its profound implications to therapy...”

Wenqing (Shelly) Xue
Wenqing (Shelly) Xue
2024 Philip Cushman Scholarship Recipient
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Wenqing (Shelly) Xue

Wenqing (Shelly) Xue

2024 Philip Cushman Scholarship Recipient

“My passion for integrating the humanities into clinical psychology aligns with Philip Cushman’s belief that future generations must be nurtured, challenged, and invested in, enabling them to rise above being mere “maintainers of the status quo"...”

Additional Information

In honor of Phil’s memory, the members of the Cushman family established the Philip Cushman Research and Educational Fund. Housed in the Center for Psychological Humanities and Ethics at Boston College, the Fund fosters the work to which Phil dedicated his life. Aiming at significant impact upon clinical training programs, academic departments, and the formation of a next generation of clinicians, the Fund supports academic scholarship and develops offerings which examine the moral, socioeconomic, and political questions at play within the field of psychology.

The goal of the Fund is to carry forward Phil’s commitment to theoretical, interdisciplinary, and moral inquiry through public facing offerings and student-oriented training programs. Several examples include the Center hosting an annual Philip Cushman Lecture, offering public lectures and workshops engaging areas of inquiry aligned with Phil’s aims, supporting students on an interdisciplinary research team dedicated to scholarship kindred to Phil’s work, and funding the dissemination of students’ research at conferences which are impactful upon the field of psychology. We anticipate these activities and offerings will reach a minimum of 8,000 students per year, carrying forward the concerns that Phil explored in his scholarship, teaching, and practice.