BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

·        Born in New York, NY, 1936.

·        Mentored before and after medical school by John Lacey at Fels Research Institute, Yellow Springs, Ohio (autonomic psychophysiology).

·        Medical school at Albert Einstein University, NY (no residency; clinical   practice only on relatives  and  friends).

·        Four years at National Institute of Mental Health, Bethesda, Maryland
with Robert B. Livingston
(neural mechanisms of attention).

·        Since 1968 I have enjoyed a research appointment at Langley Porter  Neuropsychiatric Institute, University of California at San Francisco.

Click for Full Curriculum Vitae

Professional Background: medicine, neuroscience, and cognitive psychology, with a focus on lateral specialization and interaction of the cerebral hemispheres and its psychiatric implications. I ran an electrophysiology lab (EEGs, ERPs, macro- and micro recording, animals and people) until the mid 80's, when I realized that research of this kind would not take me where I wanted to go. Since then I have devoted myself to theoretical inquiry and speculation on the Great Questions.

Main Current Project: “What makes people “whole” ?

After years of studying disconnections, dissociations, and fragmentations, I realized that what really mattered to me was what makes people whole. A person is more than a bunch of parts; the parts are integrated (more or less), to constitute an entity. We have no special technical term to denote "wholeness," but I believe this is one of the qualities we refer to with our common word "self." Unfortunately, the word "self" as used in technical psychology, philosophy, religious and mystical studies, as well as in common speech, is usually only vaguely defined, if at all. I conceive of the self as an emergent phenomenon which cannot be grasped or entirely represented only at one level; not just mind or brain or chemistry or culture. But by examining what we know already at these levels, we can develop a better idea of the landmarks and boundaries which any full account of self will have to consider.

This inquiry led me to William James and his interest in wholeness, self, consciousness, and in particular, the phenomenology of "religious" experience from the scientific point of view. The aspects of a person which I am trying to clarify under the general rubric of wholeness have long been a concern of philosophy, religion, spiritual and mystical studies. James believed that "..the evolution of character consists chiefly in ...unifying the inner self," and that while the spiritual path is only one out of many ways of reaching unity, religious experience provides exemplars for studying "the peculiarities of the process of unification, when it occurs." In his turn-of-the-century classic, Varieties of Religious Experience, William James applied the psychology and neurology then available in an exploration of the personal, inner aspects of religious experience (as opposed to institutional aspects of religion).  James applied the psychology and neurology then available in an exploration of the personal, inner aspects of religious experience (as distinct from institutional aspects of religion).

In his time, James did not have to justify the usefulness of studying religious experience; rather, he had to justify treating it from the perspective of science. In our time the situation is reversed; contemporary Western science rarely bothers with anything religious, even less if it is rooted in a really foreign culture or ancient time. Nevertheless, the practitioners of these disciplines have not all been dopes. Any comprehensive theory of people we may construct must take into account the empirical data and concepts from these disciplines as well as from the contemporary biological, psychological, and social sciences. I am currently working on reframing the concepts "spirit" and "spiritual experience" in a way that will be consistent with contemporary scientific thinking which emphasizes organization and emergence. The reframing is also to be consistent with most traditional usages. The intent is to leave the spiritual and the scientific at ease together. Religious people need not be forced to choose between their spiritual experiences and natural science, and the non-religious and the scientifically-minded need no longer cut themselves off from examining the observations, practices, and theoretical developments that have gone on for thousands of years in the context of the world's religions.