Shades of Becoming: A Space for Psychoanalysis. Shades is an online community space that aims to bring together minds and hearts that are passionate about Psychoanalysis and the journey of self-knowledge, healing and creativity. Under its canopy, we plan to host conversations with psychoanalytic thinkers, organize study groups, supervision circles and creativity hub.
Shalini Masih
Shalini Masih, PhD, co-founder of Shades of Becoming, is a Psychotherapist with Psychoanalytic orientation, with United Kingdom Council of Psychotherapy. She also offers supervision to other Psychoanalytic Psychotherapists. She has taught Psychoanalysis in MPhil Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy program of School of Human Studies, Ambedkar University Delhi. She has worked with traumatized children, adolescents and with borderline and psychotic young adults. Her doctoral thesis was a Psychoanalytic Study on ‘Beauty in Ugliness in Spirit Possession and Exorcism.’ Her interest lies in understanding psychic states that do not render themselves easily to representation of any kind, body in Psychoanalysis, Dissociation, Psychosis, Dreams and Nightmares, impact of motherhood on the clinician, cultural processes and the kind of Psychoanalysis feasible to a given cultural soil.
She has presented papers in a number of National and International Psychoanalytic Conferences. She has received accolades for her clinical thinking and Psychoanalytic writing. Her paper received the Critics Award for Best Psychoanalytic Writing in The Fifth International Psychoanalytic Conference, New Delhi, India, January 2018.
Recently one of her papers was nominated for Gradiva Awards 2020 under the Best Article Category.
She is also a clinician learning to become a mother to her chirpy little toddler daughter!
The Team
Durgesh Ojha
Durgesh Ojha is a psychoanalytical psychotherapist. He loves food and psychotherapy equally and believes in the nourishing quality of both. He focuses on the self and identity part of one’s life and provides an active listening ear to the patients to be able to speak, reflect, nourish and grow.
He has always been interested in connecting with other lives and providing a space of
exploration. His vision is to create an awareness about mental health, not only for
psychological issues but also for growth, development and self- exploration. The
stigma around mental health makes it difficult to reach out, especially in our culture,
which makes the life of a person very difficult. Psychoeducation is one area in which he
is keenly engaged to counter the stereotypes and create larger awareness.
In today’s world of rainbow positivism which is narrowed and lead to various kinds of
pressures and focuses on just management of the issue at hand rather than exploring
its vicissitudes in our lives, he is inclined towards developing a deeper and holistic
understanding of one’s life in addition to just managing it. That adds life to the living
and add colors to that rainbow. Durgesh intends to provide a safe, secure, non- judgmental and empathic space of listening and reflection.
Epsita Sandhu
Creative Head
Epsita Sandhu is a psychodynamic psychotherapist trained in the MPhil of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy from Ambedkar University Delhi. She graduated with Honours in Psychology from Panjab University and then went on to acquire a Masters in Science of Clinical Psychology from Christ University Bengaluru.
Here at Shades of Becoming, apart from being a core member, she is also the manager for our website and social media. She is the designer of our logo, our website and lends her artwork and design to create a stimulating, inviting and user-friendly experience for all those who seek our services.
She is also the proud founder of Inchoasis, a media platform that attempts to capture the experiences of being engaged in psychoanalysis in various clinical, social, cultural, political and academic contexts and through a wide web of locations on, off and behind the couch. Inchoasis is a developing discourse through a blog and a podcast. She has presented papers in national as well as international conferences, writing about gender and subjectivity and related experiences. In her MPhil thesis she undertook a narrative analysis of perinatal loss as lived by gestational people and hopes to make the movement of giving voice to grief an important pursuit in her life. Close to grief, of course, are encounters with love, rage, gratitude, healing, selfhood, relationships- an entire nexus of human experience she navigates with the ennerving friendships she shares with her wonderful, brilliant peers and mentors. She reads, writes, paints and sings in these tremors and torrents of loving and mourning.
Gagan Ahluwalia
Gagan Ahluwalia is a psychodynamic psychotherapist in training, and a research scholar at Ambedkar University Delhi where she also completed her masters in Psychosocial Clinical Studies. She has been a student of literature, and law in a previous avatar, before arriving at psychoanalysis. While brewing and drinking endless cups of tea, Gagan often finds herself exploring the (un)bearableness of being. She often finds herself pondering all kinds of spaces and their potential for creation and destruction. She is interested in philosophy, psychoanalysis, literature, music, movies, and intersections: roads, life, feminism, disciplines, what have you. She likes to read, write, and think about the interconnectedness of things. She is inspired by philosophical musings of Milan Kundera, and the audaciously vulnerable and insightful work of Michael Eigen. She dreams one day to weave yarns into stories about human lives and loves. Her areas of interest include the narratives people build about themselves, and the stories they use to relate to their lives; gender and subjectivity and the nebulous affects that surround it; transgenerational transmission of trauma; being and becoming. She is currently exploring the question of the female subject, the space for femininity, and female rage, and its fascinating machinations and movements in the clinic for her thesis to qualify for her Mphil. She fancies herself a dabbler in art, poetry, and prose. She thinks in music and lyrics, and in metaphors, finding great joy and also some frustrations in the mysterious workings of the unconscious.
Shades of Becoming 