Joseph Maffly-Kipp on depression, anxiety, and authenticity
Joseph Maffly-Kipp is a PhD student in Clinical Psychology, currently completing his clinical internship at The Ohio State University Medical Center. He grew up in North Carolina, attended Bates College for his undergraduate degree, and earned his MS and is currently a PhD candidate at Texas A&M University. His research interests lie at the intersection of existential psychology and mental health/illness, particularly surrounding concerns about mortality, meaning, identity, and authenticity. Specific areas of inquiry have involved the relationship between mood disorders and meaning-making, fluctuations in self-concept/self-definition over time, and the existential function of conspiracies and psychotic delusions. In 2023, Joe received the ISSEP Innovation in Existential Psychology Research Award for his research finding that people with depression can experience anxiety as an authentic self-expression.
Joe on the web: Lab | Google Scholar | ResearchGate
By David Reed, University of Washington. September 25, 2023.
ISSEP: How did you first become aware of an interested in existentialism and the science of existential psychology?
Clockwise from top left: Victor Frankl; Man’s Search For Meaning; Albert Camus.
Joseph Maffly-Kipp: Probably like many people in our field, I was first introduced to existential philosophy in college. Victor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning was the first book I read that really stuck with me. I kept thinking about it. As a psychology major, I ended up taking some classes on identity and meaning in life. At the same time, I started reading more traditional and absurdist existential philosophy like Albert Camus. College is where you’re supposed to sort out your interests, and that’s exactly what I was doing! I felt like these authors were hitting on themes that felt familiar; I could relate to them, but until then I’d never explicitly put them into words. These themes were undercurrents in my life but now they were brought to the surface and in a really powerful way. This is also around the time I was introduced to Terror Management Theory, which was enormously appealing because it demonstrated that you could use the scientific method to learn more about these deep existential themes that seemed to lay at the heart of what it meant to be human.
After getting my undergraduate degree, I worked at a psychiatric hospital in Austin, TX. It might seem obvious, but that experience was so very different from reading abstract existential and philosophy texts in a small liberal arts college. But it also felt like there were important connections between existential philosophy and mental illness. So, I began to look for a way to combine those things—existential psychology research and clinical mental health—and that directed me into a more value oriented, career-oriented direction with it. That led me into grad school at Texas A&M, where I was able to combine my interest in existential anxiety with my desire to alleviate suffering among individuals with mental illness.
There is something fundamentally human in struggle and suffering, which existential psychology can speak to, and these cumulative experiences helped to connect the dots. Beyond the tangible influences, like biology and poverty, so many individuals living with mental illness seem to struggle to find their place in the world, struggle to find a sense of purpose. And within the context of therapy, huge improvements happen once someone has a sense of where they belong and once they develop a sense of purpose. In my experience, many therapists figure these things out intuitively, but I don’t often see them articulated in a satisfying way in therapeutic training or psychological research, so it’s been nice to be able to see these things come together here.
ISSEP: You’ve been doing some great research related to authenticity and depression lately. Can you tell us a little bit more about your work?
Joseph Maffly-Kipp: In a series of six studies, my colleagues and I explored the possibility that, in the case of depression, where people might identify with certain maladaptive behaviors, the act of worrying might actually feel like an authentic self-expression. In our first several studies, we used survey style measures to have participants quantitatively rate their levels of depression symptoms (low scores = no or low depression symptoms, high scores = more depression symptoms), the degree to which they worried about a variety of topics (e.g., academic worry, financial worry), and whether they felt like they were living authentically. Those initial studies found that worrying positively predicted authenticity for people high in depression, but not for people low in depression.
We next ran a study using a “daily diary” survey design, during COVID-19, which administered those quantitative measures longitudinally. The data patterns revealed that, on days where people with depression worried more, they felt more authentic. This pattern was not seen among non-depressed participants. This was consistent with the previous study, but showed that the pattern was observable even within-people on a longitudinal timescale.
Finally, we ran several experiments in which we first measured participants’ levels of depression and then randomly assigned them to do one of two activities: active worrying vs. a cognitive reframing exercise, which is commonly done in cognitive-behavioral therapy for depression. Cognitive reframing is when a therapist helps a patient take a particularly unhelpful thought and reframe it to a more helpful thought. For instance, someone with depression may ruminate on the thought, “I am unlovable,” but with cognitive re-framing a therapist would guide the patient through exercises that would modify that thought to something more helpful like, “I am worthy of love.” The data patterns revealed that, among individuals without depression, worry and thought re-evaluation felt equally authentic. However, for individuals with depression, worrying about their unhelpful thoughts felt more authentic than trying to modify that thought.
We think this research has potentially important implications: If people experience maladaptive behaviors like worrying as authentic self-expression, it could obstruct effective treatment, prolong periods of depression, and might be a contributing factor for other disorders.
ISSEP: What do you think are some next steps for this research topic, and what do you see as the most important next steps toward better understanding these experiences?
Joseph Maffly-Kipp: One next step is to translate this research into clinical treatment for depression and other conditions. If people are internalizing maladaptive conditions, such that the unhealthy experience feels like an authentic self-expression and efforts to reframe unhelpful thoughts feel inauthentic, then how can therapists become aware of, deal with, and overcome that phenomenon? It’s very important we bridge the gap between the science of existential psychology and therapeutic interventions.
For people who struggle with depression, it seems that a huge part of that struggle is trying to understand, “What is this world?” “Who am I within it?” “How am I a valuable part of the way that I see things around me?” How can we therapists help people with depression address the idea that worry is fundamentally part of who they truly are, and help them trade-in their depression for a sense of meaning and purpose? Integrating these existential psychology ideas into an evidence-based therapy approach could be an important way forward in improving patient care.
“Integrating these existential psychology ideas into an evidence-based therapy approach could be an important way forward in improving patient care.”
ISSEP: You’ve attended, and presented research at, the Existential Psychology Pre-conference. How has your experience been with that, and what are some of your favorite parts of the event?
Joseph Maffly-Kipp: I thought it was great! I really enjoyed having a community of people I knew all had similar interests. Sometimes when you’re chatting with family, friends, or even strangers about these topics, this existential stuff can be a difficult topic for conversation. But the Existential Psychology Pre-conferences are so wonderful because the community is so welcoming, makes it so easy to fit in, and is able to have practical and engaging conversations about these topics!
My first pre-conference was in New Orleans in 2020, right before the pandemic hit. That was the last big academic social event for a while, which made that sense of community even more memorable! I loved listening to different people’s research talks and the way they approach answering their particular questions. I really enjoyed visiting with the other researchers in the poster sessions, the coffee breaks, between talks; there is just something about being together for events like that, where you can more easily introduce yourself and make connections. It’s also allowed me to meet other students, at similar stages in training, and build a network of colleagues who will move through our careers together.
ISSEP: What is some advice you would give to people who want to follow in your footsteps, so they too can make innovative contributions to the science of existential psychology?
“Take your time and explore your interests, more broadly, before and during grad school”
Joseph Maffly-Kipp: At this point in my career, I have two bits of advice. First, be sensitive to the strengths and weaknesses of intuition and analytic thought along your path. A lot of people go into psychotherapy with intuition being their driving force, or they are motivated by wanting to help people and hoping to use science to figure out how to do that. But, at some point in their training, many students will find that science is slow and arduous, and that it may not currently offer sufficient data to completely characterize the phenomenology of human experience. As someone who wants to integrate clinical and existential psychology, I think it is important to recognize and accept this gap that may exist between your intuition and the science. That said, it’s important to push through that discomfort, because science really does have something to offer.
Second, take your time and explore your interests, more broadly, before and during grad school. I’m always a big fan of encouraging people to aspire to careers in psychological research, but I’ve also seen it turn out poorly. So, I think there is probably some important balance to find between holding onto your original passions/ambitions, while also remaining humble, patient, and flexible given the realities of a young and imperfect field. Be ready to adjust your interests if you find a particular area of the field isn’t as appealing as you thought it would be, or to follow new aspects of the field that spark your interests more strongly than you originally thought they might.
ISSEP: Outside of work/research context, can you tell us a little bit more about yourself?
Joseph Maffly-Kipp: I try to embody the things that I am interested in, viewing my life as probably the only one I have. I want to see as much of the world as I can and just experience as many things as I can experience while I am here. I view exploration and openness as a way to live a more fulfilled life. This job has a lot of deep work involved in it, and getting away from that and having a good work-life balance is important. I try to give myself grace and recognize that there are some times that I’m super productive and other times when I am doing kind of the bare minimum and just enjoying life outside of work.
With that in mind, I do like to get away from society a bit by camping and being in the wilderness. My favorite camping spots have been Acadia National Park, Big Bend National Park, and the Blue Ridge Mountains. I also love to travel! My favorite places I've visited have been Mt. Katahdin in Maine, Fiji, New Zealand, and Big Sur.
I also really enjoy music, and love going to music festivals and seeing live music as much as I possibly can. Living in Austin was great for that and Columbus also seems to be great for that, too. Relatedly, I enjoy playing guitar and writing songs, which has been a good escape for me.
ISSEP: What music are you listening to lately, and does it depend on whether you’re working on lab projects versus just enjoying music otherwise?
Joseph Maffly-Kipp: Yes, it totally does! I really struggle to focus while I'm listening to music. Something happens to me when I listen to music. It’s hard for me to both listen to music and do deep work. Most of the time I want to be really, really listening to the music. It’s hard for my brain to not be thinking about what is going on musically, visualizing the music in some way. My brain just latches on to it. But when I’m working, I like to get deep into it. So, it’s got to be dead silence, my eyes two inches from the screen, and my phone across the room so I can be as grounded as I can possibly be.
Outside of work, I love to listen to music. Lately, I’ve been listening to the albums Present Tense by Wild Beasts, I Don’t Live Here Anymore by The War on Drugs, Randy Newman/Live by Randy Newman, The Tide’s Magnificence: Songs and Poems of Molly Drake by Molly Drake, and Weathervanes by Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit.