Susan Sugarman’s primary research, on the psychology of ordinary mental life, involves the analysis of aspects of everyday human experience that elude explanation and thus force us to think beyond customary categories of understanding. A developmental psychologist by training, she is especially interested in experiences that may be illuminated by comparisons of childhood and adulthood.
Having published on Freud, she is currently working on what it is to hope, an occupation remarkably elusive to definition. Hope is conceived in modern, secular thought as the cautious expectation something will occur one desires to occur. But a moment’s thought reveals something more is involved: I may want it to rain and may expect it to do so, given the weather forecast. But those stances don’t entail that I hope it will rain. What more are we doing when we hope?
Sugarman taught HUM 365: Freud on the Psychological Foundations of the Mind in Fall 2021. She is currently teaching PSY 210 / HUM 210: Foundations of Psychological Thought.
For full bio please visit the Psychology Department website.
