Psychology Webinar - Fulya Özcanlı

Dr. Fulya Özcanlı (Research fellow at University of Leuven)

Research interests:

Dr. Özcanlı’s research agenda is situated at the intersection between clinical and cultural psychology. She is interested in what ways culture shapes the experience and expression of psychological disorders. In her studies, she particularly focuses on the cross-cultural aspects of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.

Presentation abstract:

Understanding Obsessions Within the Cultural Context

Although Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is a condition that exists across the world, it is not clear whether its experience is universal: Cultural studies to date have suffered from methodological limitations and have not offered a culturally-framed explanation about its observations. In this talk, I will present a set of studies through which I aimed to overcome the methodological shortcomings of previous studies, and provide a cultural-clinical framework that can contribute to our understanding of the cross-cultural variations in OCD. I built on the clinical models proposing obsessions as threatening thoughts for the valued aspects of self, and explored whether cultural differences in obsessions can be understood from cultural models selves (i.e., agency) and morality. The results of my studies support the idea that some cultural differences in obsessions can be understood from the logic of agency and morality; they also point to a substantial cross-cultural overlap in phenomenology. 

Tuesday, May 11, 2021, 1:30 pm -  2:30 pm.

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Meeting ID: 997 3229 3808
Passcode: 733299