Scumbag Sewer Rats

My name is John E. Smethers, Ph.D., and though I'm not currently teaching, I am an adjunct faculty member in the psychology department of Barstow College and the sociology department of Park University.

Click here for my Issues in Psychology course at Barstow College

Click here for my Intro to Psychology course at Barstow College

This site has been created to draw interest to my two books. The first one

SCUMBAG SEWER RATS:

An Archetypal Understanding of Criminalized Drug Addicts

is pictured above. The second one is

SCUMBAG TO Ph.D:

30 Years of Drug Addiction

(unpublished)

Scumbag Sewer Rats: Criminalized Male Drug Addicts and the Trickster Archetype is the title of my doctoral dissertation, which served as a

foundation for my book Scumbag Sewer Rats: An Archetypal Understanding of

Criminalized Drug Addicts.

Education:

Pacifica Graduate Institute

(Ph.D. , Depth Psychology - 2004)

National University

(Master of Human Services in Community Psychology - 1998)

Chapman University

(BA, Psychology - 1994)

Barstow Community College

(AA, Psychology - 1992)

Take Carl Jung's

Personality Test

then read

a description of

your psychological type

Take the quiz

at the bottom of the page to find the archetypes that are active in your life

Take the quiz

to find your financial archetypes

PhD commencement 2004

The classic puer aeternus

Hermes, the classical trickster

The real, Catch Me if You Can, trickster

My principal interests are Addiction/Recovery, Depth Psychology

and the American Civil War

What is Depth Psychology?

The short answer: depth psychology is a tradition initiated by Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, and elaborated on by others, including James Hillman with his Archetypal Re-visioning of psychology as well as many of the phenomenological schools. The spirit of depth psychology is nourished by understanding literature, myth, spirituality, alchemy, and the mystery traditions. For the long answer, click on What is Depth Psychology?

Carl Gustav Jung wrote that:

"Anyone who wants to know the human psyche will learn next to nothing from experimental psychology. He would be better advised to put away his scholar’s gown, bid farewell to his study, and wander with human heart through the world. There, in the horrors of prisons, lunatic asylums and hospitals, in drab suburban pubs, in brothels and gambling-hells [sic], in the salons of the elegant, the Stock Exchanges, Socialist meetings, churches, revivalist gatherings and ecstatic sects, through love and hate, through the experience of passion in every form in his own body, he would reap richer stores of knowledge than text-books a foot thick could give him, and he will know how to doctor the sick with real knowledge of the human soul" (Jung, 1945, 1953, p. 244 [CW 7, para. 409]).

Criminalized drug addicts (mostly male), who I also refer to as jointsters, personify two archetypes: the Puer Aeternus (eternal boy in Latin) and the Trickster