Mridula Sridhar
Thesis title: Healing beyond colonial fragmentation: Towards psychotherapeutic alterity

PhD supervisors:
Research summary
Rooted in the cultural context of modernity, modern psychotherapy carries inherent assumptions that shape and sustain it—assumptions my work seeks to challenge. I explore how psychotherapy maintains (or fails to address) modernity’s fragmentations such as atomism, individualism, instrumental rationality, alienation, meaninglessness, and disconnection. I further challenge its claim to universality, recognising how that reinforces a colonial framework. Drawing on my cultural particularity, I ask: How can we re-conceptualise health, mental health and its expression, and healing from a non-modern perspective? How do we understand the self? How do we understand relationality? What are the implications for counselling and psychotherapy? My approach draws on decolonial scholarship, relational psychoanalysis, psychosocial studies, critical imperial history, philosophical non-dualism, and my practice of Carnatic music alongside generational knowledge.
Research blog: https://iyakkam.substack.com/about
Publications:
"Modern Psychology and its Colonial Legacy" published on Mad in America (2024): https://www.madinamerica.com/2024/12/modern-psychology-and-its-colonial-legacy/
Papers delivered
European Congress of Qualitative Inquiry 2025
- "Being Brown and Not-Brown: Reclaiming Subjectivity in Resistance"
- "Meeting and Holding a Gaze as Collaborative Writing's Precondition" with co-presenters Dr Fiona Murray and Dr Edgar Rodríguez-Dorans