What you have here, in this book, represents something substantively different from what has come before. Psychotopology fieldwork says, “Yes, strong passions live inside of you. They clamor for expression. And you are granted permission to experience them as they are, to learn from them, discover their deeper needs and longings, and to shape them into expressions that serve you and your entire life.”
There is nothing in the doorway of fieldwork that assigns an interpretation to anything you experience when you walk through that doorway. There is nothing in fieldwork that does anything but support you in noticing what is actually there inside of you, and re-establishing a healthy, real relationship with all that is there.
Through fieldwork, we have an opportunity to enter into these spaces by ourselves and together, and to re-imagine what it means to be human. Through fieldwork, we are invited to feel again, and to show up with the presence of that feeling in our shared worlds. Showing up in this way, with what truly lives inside of us, has the potential to reshape our world, to dissolve these scaffolds of rational confinement, to reconnect us to the powerful creative forces within ourselves. As we begin to feel again, I believe we will regain the capacity to choose presence over production, connection over separation, life over these endless spirals of evisceration.
Life. It lives in us. It wants to move through us, and among us, into the world and back again. This is what it means to be human. This is what it is to fully live, to feel, to be.
Upcoming Group Explorations
One thing I am intending to offer soon, most likely primarily as a local offering in Bellingham, is a series of cohort explorations using fieldwork to “get real” with the actual felt experience behind many of our confusing and complicated personal, relational and social dynamics. Here are some of the topics we may explore:
Belonging and inclusion/exclusion
Intimate relationships and sexuality
Power and social status
Identity, transitions and self-concept
Grief and loss
Conflict and disagreement
Parenthood and caregiving
Addiction and coping mechanisms
Work and vocation
Religious and spiritual life
Family systems and intergenerational dynamics
Ancestry and legacy burdens
Embodiment and health
Nature and technology
Inner safe spaces and danger zones
Social collapse and global despair
Transitions and thresholds
My vision for these groups is to support a profoundly accepting space where we are each able to discover the subtle richness within ourselves and one another by:
Stepping out of the illusion of the citadel self by embracing the beautifully sophisticated multiplicity within us all,
Escaping the dominance of language over what we allow to be real in our lived experience,
Noticing and affirming that belonging exists as a fundamental property of existence for all of us, all of the time, and
Offering and receiving a deep trust among ourselves that in our humanity, we are expressions of life itself in all its wondrous beauty.
I would also like to begin offering training explorations for therapists, counselors and coaches. Let me know how that would best work for you.
Spring will most likely join me in hosting many of these, and I am intending for these offerings to launch organically, through conversations with you. As you begin to open to the opportunities for growth and awareness available through fieldwork, I invite you to reach out to me with your own desires for exploration (joe@psychotopology.com). It will be through these points of contact with you that I will receive the signals for what to offer next, and how to gather a cohort for that offering.
Looking for Collaborators
For maybe one, maybe a few of you, something of what is in this book touches a nerve. A good nerve — one that sends a jolt of intrigue through your system. You smell something, you sense something, you get flashes of some kind of possibility in what I’ve written and what you’ve experienced already in exploring fieldwork.
For example, because fieldwork gives us access to the core architecture of our being, it can be immediately applied in quite a number of directions to support efforts already underway to master this experience of being human. In these various directions, whether philosophical or spiritual, psychotherapeutic or cultural, or simply personal, fieldwork can be incorporated into current practices and frameworks in such a way as to enhance what is already strong. That’s awesome. If this turns out to be your path, I want to support you in whatever ways I can. Let me know what you are drawn to and we will figure something out.
Beyond that, I am also looking for collaborators in this new science. If this speaks to how you think about things, how you approach the challenges of our world, how you tend to hold your own most important projects and questions, perhaps you might find a role to play. I would love to welcome one or more people who see the potential in this already, who trust where I am coming from, and want to jump in, learn more, and contribute their best efforts to bringing this science into the world.
In either case, please get in touch with me and let’s figure out how you can get involved. Just shoot me an email (joe@psychotopology.com), and we’ll have a conversation to see what might be possible.
And if you are one who recognizes the importance of this effort and has something different than collaboration to offer, please let me know how you would like contribute. As I’ve mentioned before, it has been difficult at times running on a shoestring, doing all the many tasks on my own, etc. I will be immensely grateful for any support you can muster.
One of the most valuable contributions I invite you to consider making is that of an introduction to someone else who might benefit from this work, or who might have something to contribute to it. Reach out to make that introduction by email, or simply share this book with someone. Even if it’s more of a one-link-in-a-chain kind of thing, where you introduce me to someone who might know someone who might know someone who can help. My goodness, I will be so grateful for that.
Stay in Touch
Finally, to all those who have been captivated by what is here in Volume 1 and would like to make sure to stay in the loop for the rolling out of Volumes 2 &3, as well as opportunities to study and practice fieldwork in cohort trainings, study groups, and other programs, please make sure to subscribe. If this work is turning out to be valuable to you, please also consider signing up for a paid subscription or making a donation through PayPal or Venmo (message or email me to ask for details).
Every little bit helps. Thank you!
~ Joe Shirley
Bellingham, WA
June, 2025