PhD success: Dr Martin Bicknell

I still regularly stroke it. It being 268 pages, hard-bound in blue and with gold letters up the spine. Three of these – Ph.D. – still amaze me. Yes, I really am a doctor and you can discursively trust me.

Since finishing my MSc in 2003 and enrolling as a research student the following year, I've had an amazing time. I've been able to read stuff simply because I found it intriguing. I've had my intellectual capacity taxed to a level beyond compare. I've had some profoundly ‘interesting' times with Andreas, my supervisor, as well as the opportunity to engage with some great students. I hope some of you will, in time, come to create an it of your own.

My thesis – Stressed subjects: Lacanian discourses at work – applied the psychoanalytic theory of Jacques Lacan to accounts of stress. Lacan was concerned to relocate the ‘psyche' within its natural social and political context. He was concerned, for example, to consider how we identity with, and are influenced by, the people and things that appear important to us. His methods often required me to invert the accepted and transcend apparently rigid boundaries. Stress, as we tell of it in such a context, can be ‘enjoyed' even if it may at the same time be destructive. During my research in kitchens, the fire and rescue service and a City law firm, I heard stories of myriad forms of stress. This multiplicity is something that should be celebrated, not be obscured within so-called ‘normal' behaviour.

So whence leads this work? We shall see, but the journey promises to remain as exciting as it has been since I left the stressful comfort of a consulting career for the comfortable stress of something – dare I say it – rather more enjoyable.