Historical Analysis of Mind, Mental Health, and Individual Characteristics

This position examines how psychiatry, psychology, and clinical mental health arrived at the frameworks they use today, and what those fields set aside along the way. You would take a single episode from that history and follow it through: what was closed off at the time, and what the field inherited as a consequence.

The role runs as one of a pair. Its companion, Substrate-Agnostic Agent Characteristics and Behavior, approaches the same underlying question from the contemporary and mechanistic side. Both ask which parts of the inherited account of persons, minds, and agency still hold; this one takes the historical side.

What we are looking for is the strand you would pursue and how you would go about it.

The disciplines that study persons, psychiatry, psychology, clinical mental health, and the parts of cognitive science adjacent to them, arrived at their current frameworks through a series of specific choices. Some of those choices closed off lines of inquiry that were live at the time and that have not been revisited since. The work of this position is to take one such episode and follow it: name the specific thing that was set aside, and name what followed from setting it aside.

This is historical work with a present-tense point. The question is not only what happened, but what the field inherited as a result and whether the inheritance holds.

Proposals may take one of these, or bring another that fits the scope above.

The move to operationalized symptom criteria. The DSM-III break is a documented event with a readable before and after. What was the field able to do afterward that it could not do before, what did it lose access to, and what followed from the trade.

The status of first-person report as evidence. At various points the field treated subjective description as unreliable evidence rather than as evidence about something. That treatment has a history, and it has downstream consequences in method and in clinical practice that can be traced concretely. Familiarity with phenomenology is directly useful here.

Graduate students, postgraduate researchers, early career researchers, and undergraduates prepared to work at that level. Familiarity with research practice and academic publishing is expected. Experience with historical analysis, or with building and revising frameworks around history, identity, cognitive science, or psychology, is the strongest signal for this position. Familiarity with phenomenology, or with the history and philosophy of psychology and psychiatry, is desired.

A proposal of 500 to 1000 words covering four things:

1. The strand and the claim. Which strand you would work on, and what a falsifiable claim about it would look like. The form we are after is “here is a specific path not taken, and here is the specific consequence of not taking it.” A claim that the field went wrong in general does not meet the standard.
2. Your approach. How you would actually get at it. What sources and methods, and what you would do first to find out whether the strand is tractable at all.
3. A timeline for the term, from mid-September to the first week of December, in three or four phases rather than week by week, with a midpoint you could be held to.
4. What you want from the term, including whether you would prefer to lead a strand or join one.

Also submit a CV. A letter of recommendation is optional and there is a slot for one. Not including a letter will not count against your proposal.

These positions are unpaid. We do not offer stipends.

We will work with your university to arrange experiential learning or internship credit where your program allows it, and we welcome applicants who bring their own funding or fellowship support. If either applies to you, say so in your proposal and we will work out the arrangement.

We read for whether the claim is genuinely arguable, whether the scope is achievable within the term, whether the approach shows real familiarity with the material, and whether your own interest in the question is legible.

Every proposal is read in full by a person. Nothing in this process runs through keyword matching, automated ranking, or AI screening of any kind, and there are no recorded interviews without a person present. If we interview you, you will be talking with someone who can answer your questions.

If the question interests you but a full proposal is more than you want to write, or you are earlier in your training than this position assumes, write to start@jopro.org. You can ask about involvement generally, or pitch a role you would create for yourself. This is a different entry point, not a lesser one.

Separately, JOPRO and Orthogonal Research and Education Lab are accepting project proposals for the fall term. If you want to lead or co-lead work in this area rather than join it, contact Jesse Parent and Bradly Alicea directly.