Faculty

Fritjof Capra, PhD, physicist and systems theorist, is a founding director of the Center for Ecoliteracy in Berkeley, CA. He serves on the faculty of the Amana-Key executive education program in Sao Paulo, Brazil, is a Fellow of Schumacher College (U.K.), and serves on the Council of Earth Charter International. Dr. Capra is the author of several international bestsellers, including The Tao of Physics (1975), The Web of Life (1996), and The Science of Leonardo (2007). He is coauthor, with Pier Luigi Luisi, of the multidisciplinary textbook, The Systems View of Life (Cambridge University Press, 2014). His new online course (www.capracourse.net) is based on his textbook. He lives in Berkeley, CA.

AREAS OF INTEREST

The Essence of Life:
During the last few decades, a new conception of life has been developed at the forefront of science. My synthesis of this new “systems view of life” involves advanced systems thinking, based on concepts derived from complexity theory. In nontechnical language, these concepts can be summarized in terms of four essential characteristics of life: life organizes itself in networks; it is inherently regenerative, creative, and intelligent. In my synthesis, these ideas — each of them radical and full of important implications — are woven into a coherent conceptual framework, integrating the biological, cognitive, social, and ecological dimensions of life.

Wilfried Ver Eecke, PhD, LPC is a philosopher, a professional counselor and a Lacanianpsychoanalyst. He got his PhD in philosophy where Professors A. De Waelhens and A.Vergote introduced him to Freud and Lacan. He presented his doctoral thesis on Freud’s article on negation in 1966. For his doctoral thesis he went to Paris where he followed the lectures of Lacan, Hyppolite, Ricoeur and Aulagnier. He then went to Freiburg where he worked with the linguist Johannes Lohmann. He then went to Harvard where he attended the lectures of the sociologist T. Parsons and the linguist R. Jacobson. In 1967 he was offered a professorship in the philosophy department at Georgetown University in Washington, DC. From 1980-1984 he was the chair of the department. he continues to teach at Georgetown University. After training with the New York Freudian Society, and undergoing a personal psychoanalysis and passing the “Pass” in Paris, he became a Lacanian psychoanalyst and a member of the International School of the Lacanian Field (EPFCL). He cofounded with Devra Simiu, PhD and Macario Giraldo, PhD the Lacanian Forum of Washington, DC which meets biweekly. He has given lectures all over the world and has published more than 50 articles on philosophy of psychoanalysis. His articles were translated into 9 languages. I authored or coauthored the following books on psychoanalytic topics.

AREAS OF INTEREST

Hegel and Lacan:
The Romantic Reformer; Negation in Psychoanalysis.

Nita Gage, DSPS, trained with R.D. Laing and his associates at the Philadelphia Association from 1974-1980. She left London and returned to America in 1980 and pursued post- graduate education in psychology and psycho spiritual studies. She trained and studied with shamanic teachers and specializes in integrative psycho spiritual healing. Nita is co-founder of the NeuroImaginal™ Institute, www.neuroimaginalinstitute.com; Director of Healer Within Retreats, www.healerwithinretreats.com, teaching medical and addiction professionals NeuroImaginal Practices for health and well-being. She is the author (with Linda Star Wolf) of Soul Whispering: The Art of Awakening Shamanic Consciousness, and lives in Maui, Hawaii.

Rebecca Esho Greenslade is an existentially trained psychotherapist and supervisor based in London. She currently works in private practice and as lecturer and training supervisor at The Minster Centre. She is the founder and director of Gaia Therapy Project, a community psychotherapy project at Hackney City Farm in East London. Rebecca is a Zen practitioner and student in the White Plum lineage. Currently Rebecca is undertaking PhD research with the Department of Psychosocial Studies at Birkbeck, University of London.
For further details: www.rebeccagreenslade.org.

Douglas Kirsner, PhD, is Emeritus Professor at Deakin University, Australia, where he previously held a Personal Chair in Philosophy and Psychoanalytic Studies. Over decades he has taught a Masters Program in Psychoanalytic Studies there on Freud, Sartre and many existential and psychoanalytic topics in undergraduate and graduate programs. His publications include The Schizoid World of Jean-Paul Sartre and R. D. Laing (Other Press 2003) and Unfree Associations: Inside Psychoanalytic Institutes (Rowman and Littlefield, 2009), numerous journal articles, book chapters, and edited collections. He is Associate Editor of the International Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies and Organizational and Social Dynamics, and Editorial Advisor to Psychoanalysis and History. He has lectured widely internationally, including the last few years at Esalen as well as China and psychoanalytic institutes around the US. He founded the Annual Deakin University Freud Conference in Melbourne, Australia, which he directed for twenty years. He is also an Honorary Member of the American Psychoanalytic Association.

AREAS OF INTEREST

Freud:
Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis; Civilization and Its Discontents; Group Psychology; R. D. Laing and Anti-psychiatry; the symmetry between R. D. Laing and Jean-Paul Sartre, elaborated in his The Schizoid World of Jean-Paul Sartre and R. D. Laing; The History of Psychoanalysis and Existential Analysis; R. D. Laing on Altered States.

Heather LaFace, PhD is on the adjunct faculty at Antioch University Santa Barbara as well as at Pacific Graduate Institute. She is in private practice in Los Angeles and Orange County where she works within a framework of attachment and relational theory. Her current writing and research interests explore paradigm-shifting connections between neuroscience, philosophy, and social theory, with a special interest in approaching extreme states from a developmental systems orientation. She lives in Los Angeles.

Jon Mills, PsyD, PhD, ABPP is a philosopher, psychoanalyst, and retired clinical psychologist. He is Honorary Professor, Department of Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies, University of Essex, Colchester, UK; Faculty in the Postgraduate Programs in Psychoanalysis & Psychotherapy, Gordon F. Derner School of Psychology, Adelphi University, NY; and Emeritus Professor of Psychology & Psychoanalysis, Adler Graduate Professional School, Toronto, Canada. Recipient of numerous awards for his scholarship, he is the author and/or editor of 30 books in psychoanalysis, philosophy, psychology, and cultural studies including Debating Relational Psychoanalysis: Jon Mills and his Critics (Routledge, 2020); Inventing God: Psychology of Belief and the Rise of Secular Spirituality (Routledge, 2017); Underworlds: Philosophies of the Unconscious from Psychoanalysis to Metaphysics (Routledge, 2014); Conundrums: A Critique of Contemporary Psychoanalysis (Routledge, 2012); Origins: On the Genesis of Psychic Reality (McGill-Queens University Press, 2010); Treating Attachment Pathology (Rowman & Littlefield, 2005); The Unconscious Abyss: Hegel’s Anticipation of Psychoanalysis (State University of New York Press, 2002); and The Ontology of Prejudice (Rodopi, 1997). In 2015 he was given the Otto Weininger Memorial Award for Lifetime Achievement by the Canadian Psychological Association.

AREAS OF INTEREST

The phenomenological-hermeneutic attitude: Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Ricoeur; Existential foundations and Onto-Phenomenology: Hegel, Heidegger, Sartre; Postmodern influences: Foucault, Derrida, Lacan, Zizek; Unconscious Ontology: Freud, Jung, Lacan; On Soul Making and Archetypal Psychology: Aristotle, Jung, Hillman; Secular Spirituality: On the Numinous.

James Norwood, PsyD graduated from the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) with a doctorate in clinical psychology. His dissertation focused on psychedelic therapies. James has studied existential philosophy and psychoanalysis with Michael Guy Thompson for the past seven years. He has also been a principal organizer for the Gnosis Retreat Center, a project to open an R.D. Laing style house for people experiencing extreme states in the Bay Area of California. He is currently a psychotherapist at the Berkeley Therapy Institute and the Free Association Clinic and has served as adjunct faculty at CIIS. Thus far, he has presented papers at Esalen Institute, CIIS, and other public forums on: Spirituality and Death: What Carlos Castaneda tells us about how to live with death; The Pursuit of Gnosis Retreat Center: How trying to create a home for extreme states supported authenticity; The Romantic-Tragic Vision of Happiness; Altered States and Extreme States: How psychedelics and psychosis can occasion breakdowns and breakthroughs.

AREAS OF INTEREST

Pyrrhonian Scepticism; Heidegger’s formulation of meditative thinking vs. calculative thinking; Nietzsche’s views on tragedy; Romanticism and mysticism.

Astréa Issler Ribeiro is a psychoanalyst in Sao Paulo, Brazil and in addition to a private practice she conducts outdoor sessions with people on the streets. She also has been working at the public psychiatric day hospital and coordinates therapeutic groups. She is also an artist and philosopher.

AREAS OF INTEREST

Turning On and Off the Light of Spirit (geared to working with schizophrenia and psychotic states; featured in our Quarterly Workshops on Extreme States) Constructing an “I” as a Source of Joy.

Sanford Rosenberg, PhD, is a clinician, executive coach, educator, and story and development consultant on media projects including movies, games, and the web, applying the methods of dream psychology and personal mythology to media. Dr. Rosenberg has been teaching and practicing skills derived from the study of phenomenology and existential psychoanalysis for over 40 years. He started a clinic in Berkeley in the ‘70s, taught at Antioch University West, designed and ran the Consciousness Studies program, and has been training clinicians and others in methods of inquiry for four decades. Dr. Rosenberg is President of Media Research Associates and specializes in qualitative knowledge-based research and clinical applications, examining the relationship between language, story, structure, symbol, image, emotion, and experience.

AREAS OF INTEREST

Embodied Imagination: The Phenomenology of Presence and Existential Analysis.

Rinat Tal, MD, is a psychiatrist and psychotherapist in private practice in Los Angeles. Her work focuses on minimizing medication management with clients with various conditions, including extreme states, incorporating a variety of influences that focus on the transformative aspects of the client-practitioner relationship. She has an abiding interest in alternatives to conventional psychiatry.

Michael Guy Thompson, PhD, received his psychoanalytic training from R. D. Laing and associates at the Philadelphia Association in London, and served as the organization’s administrator from 1973–1980. He is Personal and Supervising Analyst and Faculty Member, Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California, San Francisco, and previously Adjunct Professor at the California School of Professional Psychology, San Francisco, and the California Institute of Integral Studies, San Francisco. He is the author of numerous journal articles, book chapters, and reviews, as well as six books, The Death of Desire: A Study in Psychopathology (1985), The Truth About Freud’s Technique (1994), The Ethic of Honesty (2004), The Legacy of R. D. Laing: An Appraisal of His Contemporary Relevance (Ed., 2015), The Death of Desire: An Existential Study in Sanity and Madness (2017, 2nd edition), an extensively revised and expanded edition of the original, and most recently, Essays in Existential Psychoanalysis: On the Primacy of Authenticity (2024), published by Routledge. Michael is founder and director, New School for Existential Psychoanalysis, and founded Free Association, Inc. in 1988 to further the legacy of R. D. Laing. His current project is a book on the relation between love and happiness: The Heart of the Matter: Essays on the Trials and Tribulations of Love Relationships. He lives in Berkeley, California. www.mguythompson.com

AREAS OF INTEREST

R. D. Laing; Sigmund Freud; Martin Heidegger; Friedrich Nietzsche; Plato; Aristotle; Pyrrho; Authenticity; Happiness; Scepticism; Love; Truth; Desire; Anti-psychiatry; Psychosis; Schizophrenia.

Connor Tindall, PsyD, graduated from the California Institute for Integral Studies, in the PsyD program in Clinical Psychology, in San Francisco. His dissertation focused on the contributions of R. D. Laing and Thomas Szasz in relation to Anti-psychiatry. Connor has been studying the treatment of extreme states with Michael Guy Thompson for more than seven years, and is committed to providing residential respite for people in crisis. He was also involved with Soteria Alaska for several years.