Nisha Gupta
Biographic Data
| ID | 5454734 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Nisha Gupta |
| GIVEN NAMES | Nisha |
| FAMILY NAME | Gupta |
| SIGNATURE | GUPTA N |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of West Georgia, Carrollton, GA, USA |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-6155-5734 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 23 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 10 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 23 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2006 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Can Psychology Be An Art ? A Journey from the Human Sciences to the Psychological Humanities
This paper advocates for an epistemic reclassification of the field of psychology to be considered not just as a science, but also as an art. I situate my vision of psychology-as-art within the burgeoning movement of the psychological humanities, and I perform a literary argument for this vision that embodies the psychological humanities itself. Through literary prose, I narrate my 15-year journey as a psychologist-artist-mystic, weaving phenomen…
Integrating Spiritual Emergency Through Visionary Art Therapy
Spiritual emergency is a phenomenon wherein individuals undergoing psychological crises may experience altered states of consciousness with transpersonal themes resembling symptoms of psychopathology. Rather than mere pathology, these altered states can catalyze a psychospiritual evolution for the individual in a generative direction, including flashes of wisdom that can benefit the collective. Considering the limits of biomedical treatment appro…
The Love of Art and the Art of Love
This paper reviews Brent Robbins’ 25 years of work as an arts-based phenomenological researcher—dedicated to reshaping the field of psychology to become a force that awakens intuitive, embodied meanings of being-in-the-world. First, it introduces Robbins’ positioning of art as a cultural therapeutic to resist the dominance of instrumental rationality in our technological world. Then, it traces the developmental origins of his arts-based approach …
Desi Eros
Arts-based phenomenological research
Reflecting back and imagining forward
Truth, freedom, love, hope, and power
As an Act of Protest and Emotional Catharsis About the Ugly Truth of Racism
In this edited interview, psychologists Eric Greene and Nisha Gupta interview filmmaker Dennis Leroy Kangalee about his film As an Act of Protest (2002), which is about a young African American actor named Cairo Medina who goes through a station-of-the-cross journey to find the meaning of his life and eradicate the racism and police brutality that continue to plague the world. In this conversation, Dennis shares the genesis of the film as a respo…
Introduction to the Special Issue on the Cultural Therapeutics of Film
This interdisciplinary special issue explores the synergy between psychotherapy and filmmaking—particularly how film can serve as a powerful healing function by bringing voice, representation, and light to the all-too-often overlooked and shadowed aspects of psychological and cultural life, similar to the work of psychotherapy. To understand the culturally therapeutic aspects of filmmaking, this issue features psychological and cinematic insights…
Inhabitation of Inhibition and Creative Freedom for Breastfeeding Mothers
In this edited interview, psychologists Nisha Gupta and Eric Greene interview Lori Jordan Fountain, psychology doctoral student and filmmaker of Inhabitation of Inhibition, an autophenomenological short film about the lived experience of breastfeeding in public. Despite the known benefits, antipathetic attitudes toward nursing in public persist, and “breastfeeding is perceived by many as dirty, sexual, embarrassing, and generally, something that …
Hot Girls Wanted and the Ethics of Critiquing Agency in Amateur Porn
In this edited interview, psychologists Nisha Gupta and Eric Greene have a conversation with filmmakers Jill Bauer and Ronna Gradus about their documentary film Hot Girls Wanted (2015), which is a first-ever look at the realities of the professional amateur porn world and the 18- to 19-year old young women entering into it. This dialogue explores the relationships they developed with the young women they filmed, the ethical questions that arose w…
We the Animals and Honoring an Intimate Story of Brutal Love
In this edited interview, psychologists Nisha Gupta and Eric Greene interview filmmaker Jeremiah Zagar about We the Animals (2018), his film adaptation of the novel by Justin Torres. We the Animals is a coming-of-age story of an adolescent boy named Jonah who grows up with rambunctious brothers in a working class mixed-race family in upstate New York, and who must contend with both his volatile father and his emerging queer sexuality. Jonah’s mot…
Back to Natural and the Intergenerational Healing of the Natural Black Hair Movement
In this edited interview, psychologists Eric Greene and Nisha Gupta converse with psychologist and filmmaker Dr. Gillian Scott-Ward about her documentary film Back to Natural (2019), which explores the psychological and emotional experience of the intersection of hair, politics, and identity in Black communities. This documentary is a powerful, thought-provoking call for healing that takes a grassroots approach to exploring the globalized policin…
Inequality for All and Activating Empowerment Amid Economic Despair
In this edited interview, psychologists Eric Greene and Nisha Gupta converse with filmmaker Jacob Kornbluth about his documentary film Inequality for All (2013), which is a passionate argument on behalf of the middle class. The film features Robert Reich—professor, best-selling author, and Clinton cabinet member—as he demonstrates how the widening income gap has a devastating impact on the American economy. The film is an intimate portrait of a m…
Maxamba and Memory-Making Amid Traumatic Displacement
In this edited interview, psychologists Eric Greene and Nisha Gupta converse with filmmaker and psychologist Suzanne Barnard about her film MAXAMBA. MAXAMBA was created as a sensory ethnographic memory of inhabitants of Lisbon’s Quinta da Vitória neighborhood as they awaited the neighborhood’s final demolition. The film focuses on the daily life of an Indian Portuguese couple who emigrated from Mozambique (a former colony of Portugal) to Lisbon i…
Teaching phenomenological research as a method of therapeutic art-making
This article is a case study about teaching undergraduate students to use hermeneutic phenomenological research methodology as a vehicle to make art which evokes the essence of lived experience. This study focuses on the phenomenon of living in a time of Coronavirus as human beings; 30 students were taught research steps to transform their experiences of living amidst a pandemic into phenomenological Covid-19 art. First, I taught students the cra…
Illuminating the trauma of the LGBTQ closet
This phenomenological research study investigated the lived experience of the LGBTQ closet and presents the research findings in two ways: a written hermeneutic interpretation, and a short film called illuminate which expresses the phenomenology of the closet through poetic cinematography. I developed a method called “cinematic-phenomenological research,’ for which I collected and interpreted phenomenological descriptions from five participants a…
Singing Away the Social Distancing Blues
This essay explores the abundance of art flourishing as a therapeutic antidote to the COVID-19 pandemic and panic arising across the world. Specifically, I discuss how the act of viewing, making, and sharing music, street art, paintings, graphic art, cinema, and digital videos can serve as a therapeutic vehicle for empowerment, solidarity, and collective action as most human beings strive to adopt practices of extreme social distancing as the rec…
Stories of faith, stories of humanity
“Stories of Faith, Stories of Humanity” is an arts-based, phenomenological research project that transformed research participants’ lived experiences of faith into artistic digital stories to cultivate empathy toward people of different faith backgrounds. As a phenomenological researcher, I interviewed nine participants with diverse spiritual and religious affiliations about their lived experiences of faith. As a digital artist, I then transforme…
Harnessing Phenomenological Research to Facilitate Conscientização About Oppressive Lived Experience
This article illustrates how liberation psychology and phenomenological research can work in tandem to raise conscientização (critical consciousness) about unjust societal dynamics, mourn sociopolitical community traumas, and construct empathic bridges among diverse citizens of society. It outlines three ways in which phenomenological researchers can harness their methodologies as an emancipatory tool for oppressed communities. First, I discuss h…
Exploring the Schizoid Defense of the Closet Through the Existential–Phenomenology of R. D. Laing
This article applies the existential–phenomenological analysis of schizoid persons in R. D. Laing’s The Divided Self to the phenomenology of closeted gay individuals, as described by various autoethnographies and memoirs about the lived experience of being in the closet. It explores how schizoid and closeted gay individuals employ similar defenses and suffer similar traumas as they attempt to survive within a persecutory social world. The purpose…
New tobacco products
Although most established smokers did not like the PREPs they tried and will not recommend them to anyone, a minority of established smokers believe that there may be a market for these products
Leveling the Playing Field
In Leveling the Playing Field: Justice, Politics, and College Admissions, Robert Fullinwider and Judith Lichtenberg add to a recently growing body of works on the equity issues in college admissions in the United States, which includes such titles as William Bowen and Derek Bok’s (1998) The Shape of the River: Long-Term Consequences of Affirmative Action and Mitchell J. Chang, Daria Witt, James Jones and Kenji Hakuta’s (2003) Compelling Interest:…
Singing Away the Social Distancing Blues
This essay explores the abundance of art flourishing as a therapeutic antidote to the COVID-19 pandemic and panic arising across the world. Specifically, I discuss how the act of viewing, making, and sharing music, street art, paintings, graphic art, cinema, and digital videos can serve as a therapeutic vehicle for empowerment, solidarity, and collective action as most human beings strive to adopt practices of extreme social distancing as the rec…
Illuminating the trauma of the LGBTQ closet
This phenomenological research study investigated the lived experience of the LGBTQ closet and presents the research findings in two ways: a written hermeneutic interpretation, and a short film called illuminate which expresses the phenomenology of the closet through poetic cinematography. I developed a method called “cinematic-phenomenological research,’ for which I collected and interpreted phenomenological descriptions from five participants a…
Harnessing Phenomenological Research to Facilitate Conscientização About Oppressive Lived Experience
This article illustrates how liberation psychology and phenomenological research can work in tandem to raise conscientização (critical consciousness) about unjust societal dynamics, mourn sociopolitical community traumas, and construct empathic bridges among diverse citizens of society. It outlines three ways in which phenomenological researchers can harness their methodologies as an emancipatory tool for oppressed communities. First, I discuss h…
New tobacco products
Although most established smokers did not like the PREPs they tried and will not recommend them to anyone, a minority of established smokers believe that there may be a market for these products
Leveling the Playing Field
In Leveling the Playing Field: Justice, Politics, and College Admissions, Robert Fullinwider and Judith Lichtenberg add to a recently growing body of works on the equity issues in college admissions in the United States, which includes such titles as William Bowen and Derek Bok’s (1998) The Shape of the River: Long-Term Consequences of Affirmative Action and Mitchell J. Chang, Daria Witt, James Jones and Kenji Hakuta’s (2003) Compelling Interest:…
Exploring the Schizoid Defense of the Closet Through the Existential–Phenomenology of R. D. Laing
This article applies the existential–phenomenological analysis of schizoid persons in R. D. Laing’s The Divided Self to the phenomenology of closeted gay individuals, as described by various autoethnographies and memoirs about the lived experience of being in the closet. It explores how schizoid and closeted gay individuals employ similar defenses and suffer similar traumas as they attempt to survive within a persecutory social world. The purpose…
Stories of faith, stories of humanity
“Stories of Faith, Stories of Humanity” is an arts-based, phenomenological research project that transformed research participants’ lived experiences of faith into artistic digital stories to cultivate empathy toward people of different faith backgrounds. As a phenomenological researcher, I interviewed nine participants with diverse spiritual and religious affiliations about their lived experiences of faith. As a digital artist, I then transforme…
Harnessing Phenomenological Research to Facilitate Conscientização About Oppressive Lived Experience
This article illustrates how liberation psychology and phenomenological research can work in tandem to raise conscientização (critical consciousness) about unjust societal dynamics, mourn sociopolitical community traumas, and construct empathic bridges among diverse citizens of society. It outlines three ways in which phenomenological researchers can harness their methodologies as an emancipatory tool for oppressed communities. First, I discuss h…
Teaching phenomenological research as a method of therapeutic art-making
This article is a case study about teaching undergraduate students to use hermeneutic phenomenological research methodology as a vehicle to make art which evokes the essence of lived experience. This study focuses on the phenomenon of living in a time of Coronavirus as human beings; 30 students were taught research steps to transform their experiences of living amidst a pandemic into phenomenological Covid-19 art. First, I taught students the cra…
Illuminating the trauma of the LGBTQ closet
This phenomenological research study investigated the lived experience of the LGBTQ closet and presents the research findings in two ways: a written hermeneutic interpretation, and a short film called illuminate which expresses the phenomenology of the closet through poetic cinematography. I developed a method called “cinematic-phenomenological research,’ for which I collected and interpreted phenomenological descriptions from five participants a…
Singing Away the Social Distancing Blues
This essay explores the abundance of art flourishing as a therapeutic antidote to the COVID-19 pandemic and panic arising across the world. Specifically, I discuss how the act of viewing, making, and sharing music, street art, paintings, graphic art, cinema, and digital videos can serve as a therapeutic vehicle for empowerment, solidarity, and collective action as most human beings strive to adopt practices of extreme social distancing as the rec…
Truth, freedom, love, hope, and power
As an Act of Protest and Emotional Catharsis About the Ugly Truth of Racism
In this edited interview, psychologists Eric Greene and Nisha Gupta interview filmmaker Dennis Leroy Kangalee about his film As an Act of Protest (2002), which is about a young African American actor named Cairo Medina who goes through a station-of-the-cross journey to find the meaning of his life and eradicate the racism and police brutality that continue to plague the world. In this conversation, Dennis shares the genesis of the film as a respo…
Introduction to the Special Issue on the Cultural Therapeutics of Film
This interdisciplinary special issue explores the synergy between psychotherapy and filmmaking—particularly how film can serve as a powerful healing function by bringing voice, representation, and light to the all-too-often overlooked and shadowed aspects of psychological and cultural life, similar to the work of psychotherapy. To understand the culturally therapeutic aspects of filmmaking, this issue features psychological and cinematic insights…
Inhabitation of Inhibition and Creative Freedom for Breastfeeding Mothers
In this edited interview, psychologists Nisha Gupta and Eric Greene interview Lori Jordan Fountain, psychology doctoral student and filmmaker of Inhabitation of Inhibition, an autophenomenological short film about the lived experience of breastfeeding in public. Despite the known benefits, antipathetic attitudes toward nursing in public persist, and “breastfeeding is perceived by many as dirty, sexual, embarrassing, and generally, something that …
Hot Girls Wanted and the Ethics of Critiquing Agency in Amateur Porn
In this edited interview, psychologists Nisha Gupta and Eric Greene have a conversation with filmmakers Jill Bauer and Ronna Gradus about their documentary film Hot Girls Wanted (2015), which is a first-ever look at the realities of the professional amateur porn world and the 18- to 19-year old young women entering into it. This dialogue explores the relationships they developed with the young women they filmed, the ethical questions that arose w…
We the Animals and Honoring an Intimate Story of Brutal Love
In this edited interview, psychologists Nisha Gupta and Eric Greene interview filmmaker Jeremiah Zagar about We the Animals (2018), his film adaptation of the novel by Justin Torres. We the Animals is a coming-of-age story of an adolescent boy named Jonah who grows up with rambunctious brothers in a working class mixed-race family in upstate New York, and who must contend with both his volatile father and his emerging queer sexuality. Jonah’s mot…
Back to Natural and the Intergenerational Healing of the Natural Black Hair Movement
In this edited interview, psychologists Eric Greene and Nisha Gupta converse with psychologist and filmmaker Dr. Gillian Scott-Ward about her documentary film Back to Natural (2019), which explores the psychological and emotional experience of the intersection of hair, politics, and identity in Black communities. This documentary is a powerful, thought-provoking call for healing that takes a grassroots approach to exploring the globalized policin…
Inequality for All and Activating Empowerment Amid Economic Despair
In this edited interview, psychologists Eric Greene and Nisha Gupta converse with filmmaker Jacob Kornbluth about his documentary film Inequality for All (2013), which is a passionate argument on behalf of the middle class. The film features Robert Reich—professor, best-selling author, and Clinton cabinet member—as he demonstrates how the widening income gap has a devastating impact on the American economy. The film is an intimate portrait of a m…
Maxamba and Memory-Making Amid Traumatic Displacement
In this edited interview, psychologists Eric Greene and Nisha Gupta converse with filmmaker and psychologist Suzanne Barnard about her film MAXAMBA. MAXAMBA was created as a sensory ethnographic memory of inhabitants of Lisbon’s Quinta da Vitória neighborhood as they awaited the neighborhood’s final demolition. The film focuses on the daily life of an Indian Portuguese couple who emigrated from Mozambique (a former colony of Portugal) to Lisbon i…
Reflecting back and imagining forward
Desi Eros
Arts-based phenomenological research
Integrating Spiritual Emergency Through Visionary Art Therapy
Spiritual emergency is a phenomenon wherein individuals undergoing psychological crises may experience altered states of consciousness with transpersonal themes resembling symptoms of psychopathology. Rather than mere pathology, these altered states can catalyze a psychospiritual evolution for the individual in a generative direction, including flashes of wisdom that can benefit the collective. Considering the limits of biomedical treatment appro…
The Love of Art and the Art of Love
This paper reviews Brent Robbins’ 25 years of work as an arts-based phenomenological researcher—dedicated to reshaping the field of psychology to become a force that awakens intuitive, embodied meanings of being-in-the-world. First, it introduces Robbins’ positioning of art as a cultural therapeutic to resist the dominance of instrumental rationality in our technological world. Then, it traces the developmental origins of his arts-based approach …
Can Psychology Be An Art ? A Journey from the Human Sciences to the Psychological Humanities
This paper advocates for an epistemic reclassification of the field of psychology to be considered not just as a science, but also as an art. I situate my vision of psychology-as-art within the burgeoning movement of the psychological humanities, and I perform a literary argument for this vision that embodies the psychological humanities itself. Through literary prose, I narrate my 15-year journey as a psychologist-artist-mystic, weaving phenomen…
Sociology (20 works) · Psychology (16 works) · Art (12 works) · Psychoanalysis (12 works) · Aesthetics (10 works) · Epistemology (8 works) · Gender Studies (8 works) · Philosophy (8 works) · Political science (7 works) · Visual arts (7 works)