Peter A. Olsson | |
---|---|
Born | 1941 (age 81–82) Brooklyn, New York, U.S. |
Nationality | American |
Citizenship | United States |
Alma mater | University of Vermont Baylor College of Medicine Wheaton College |
Known for | Malignant Pied Pipers of Our Time: A Psychological Study of Destructive Cult Leaders From the Rev. Jim Jones to Osama bin Laden |
Awards | 1979 Judith Baskin Offer Prize |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Psychiatry, psychoanalysis |
Institutions | Dartmouth Medical School |
Peter A. Olsson (born 1941, Brooklyn, New York) is an American psychiatrist, psychoanalyst and author. He is author of the book, Malignant Pied Pipers of Our Time: A Psychological Study of Destructive Cult Leaders from Rev. Jim Jones to Osama bin Laden. [1]
Olsson won the 1979 Judith Baskin Offer Prize for his paper "Adolescent Involvement with the Supernatural and Cults." [2] [3]
Olsson has practiced medicine as a psychiatrist for more than 30 years in Texas and New Hampshire. He has published many scholarly papers and contributed chapters to eight books about psychology. [4] [5]
Olsson is an assistant professor of psychiatry, supervising medical residents at Dartmouth Medical School; [6] Adjunct Clinical Professor of Psychiatry Baylor College of Medicine; Past President of the Houston Psychiatric Society; a graduate of the Houston-Galveston Psychoanalytic Institute; Fellow of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis; and Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association. [3]
Prior to publishing Malignant Pied Pipers of Our Time in 2005, Olsson had written scholarly articles on the subject; specifically on Osama bin Laden and Shoko Asahara. These include "A Malignant Pied Piper: Osama bin Laden", [7] which also appeared as Chapter 5 in the book Jihad and Sacred Vengeance: Psychological Undercurrents of History, [8] and "Shoko Asahara: The malignant pied piper of Japan", [9] which was cited by Rosenman in The American Journal of Psychoanalysis. [10]
In 2006, Olsson gave the plenary speech at the annual meeting of The American Society of Psychoanalytic Physicians, where he spoke about his book, and took questions from fellow physicians. [11] [12]
Psychoanalysis is a set of theories and therapeutic techniques that deal in part with the unconscious mind, and which together form a method of treatment for mental disorders. The discipline was established in the early 1890s by Sigmund Freud, whose work stemmed partly from the clinical work of Josef Breuer and others. Freud developed and refined the theory and practice of psychoanalysis until his death in 1939. In an encyclopedia article, he identified the cornerstones of psychoanalysis as "the assumption that there are unconscious mental processes, the recognition of the theory of repression and resistance, the appreciation of the importance of sexuality and of the Oedipus complex." Freud's colleagues Alfred Adler and Carl Gustav Jung developed offshoots of psychoanalysis which they called individual psychology (Adler) and Analytical Psychology (Jung), although Freud himself wrote a number of criticisms of them and emphatically denied that they were forms of psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis was later developed in different directions by neo-Freudian thinkers, such as Erich Fromm, Karen Horney, and Harry Stack Sullivan.
Psychotherapy is the use of psychological methods, particularly when based on regular personal interaction, to help a person change behaviour, increase happiness, and overcome problems. Psychotherapy aims to improve an individual's well-being and mental health, to resolve or mitigate troublesome behaviours, beliefs, compulsions, thoughts, or emotions, and to improve relationships and social skills. Numerous types of psychotherapy have been designed either for individual adults, families, or children and adolescents. Certain types of psychotherapy are considered evidence-based for treating some diagnosed mental disorders; other types have been criticized as pseudoscience.
The Menninger Foundation was founded in 1919 by the Menninger family in Topeka, Kansas. The Menninger Foundation, known locally as Menninger's, consists of a clinic, a sanatorium, and a school of psychiatry, all of which bear the Menninger name. Menninger's consisted of a campus at 5800 S.W. 6th Avenue in Topeka, Kansas which included a pool as well as the other aforementioned buildings. In 2003, the Menninger Clinic moved to Houston. The foundation was started in 1919 by Dr. Charles F. Menninger and his sons, Drs. Karl and William Menninger. It represented the first group psychiatry practice. "We had a vision," Dr. C. F. Menninger said, "of a better kind of medicine and a better kind of world."
Psychodynamic psychotherapy and psychoanalytic psychotherapy are two categories of psychological therapies. Their main purpose is revealing the unconscious content of a client's psyche in an effort to alleviate psychic tension, which is inner conflict within the mind that was created in a situation of extreme stress or emotional hardship, often in the state of distress. The terms "psychoanalytic psychotherapy" and "psychodynamic psychotherapy" are often used interchangeably, but a distinction can be made in practice: though psychodynamic psychotherapy largely relies on psychoanalytical theory, it employs substantially shorter treatment periods than traditional psychoanalytical therapies.
Theodore Shapiro is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst in New York, where he is a professor emeritus in psychiatry and pediatrics at Weill Cornell Medical College and the Payne Whitney Psychiatric Clinic. He is a faculty member of the Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research and a training and supervising psychoanalyst at the New York Psychoanalytic Institute.
Richard A. Isay was an American psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, author and gay activist. He was a professor of psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College and a faculty member of the Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research. Isay is considered a pioneer who changed the way that psychoanalysts view homosexuality.
Vamık D. Volkan, M.D., DFLAPA, FACPsa, is a Turkish Cypriot psychiatrist, internationally known for his 40 years work bringing together conflictual groups for dialogue and mutual understanding. Among his many other honours, he is the president emeritus of International Dialogue Initiative (IDI).
The Austen Riggs Center is a psychiatric treatment facility in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. It was founded by Austen Fox Riggs in 1913 as the Stockbridge Institute for the Study and Treatment of Psychoneuroses before being renamed in honor of Austen Riggs on July 21, 1919.
Jack Drescher is an American psychiatrist and psychoanalyst known for his work on sexual orientation and gender identity.
Glen Owens Gabbard is an American psychiatrist known for authoring professional teaching texts for the field. He is Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, and is also training and supervising analyst at the Center for Psychoanalytic Studies in Houston.
The American Academy of Psychodynamic Psychiatry and Psychoanalysis (AAPDPP) is a scholarly society including psychiatrists interested in all aspects of psychodynamic psychiatry.
Richard C. Friedman was an academic psychiatrist, the Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College, and a faculty member at Columbia University. He has conducted research in the endocrinology and the psychodynamics of homosexuality, especially within the context of psychoanalysis. Friedman was born in The Bronx, New York.
Fredric Neal Busch is a Weill Cornell Medical College professor of clinical psychiatry based in New York City. He is also a faculty member at the Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research.
Boris Dmitrievich Karvasarsky was a Russian psychiatrist, a disciple of V. N. Myasishchev.
The Goethe Award for Psychoanalytic and Psychodynamic Scholarship is given annually by the Section on Psychoanalytic and Psychodynamic Psychology of the Canadian Psychological Association. The award is given for the best psychoanalytic book published within the past two years and is juried by a peer review process and awards committee.
Andrew J. Gerber is an American psychoanalyst and the current president and medical director of Silver Hill Hospital in New Canaan, Connecticut. His principal interests and research lie in studying the neurobiological bases of social cognition, particularly in relation to autism spectrum disorders and change in response to psychotherapy. He is a member of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, American Psychiatric Association, American Psychoanalytic Association and the Psychoanalytic Psychodynamic Research Society.
Eric M. Plakun is an American psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, researcher and forensic psychiatrist. He is the current medical director/CEO at the Austen Riggs Center in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Plakun's primary interests include the mental health advocacy, full implementation of the mental health parity law, access-to-care issues, and reducing health disparities; the value of and evidence base for psychosocial treatments and the diagnosis, treatment, longitudinal course and outcome of patients with borderline personality disorder and treatment resistant disorders. Plakun has been widely published and quoted in the media on psychotherapy and psychiatry, including in The New York Times and The Globe and Mail. He has appeared in the media to discuss his psychiatric work on WAMC, the Albany, New York, affiliate of NPR. and on CBS 60 Minutes. His psychiatric research has been widely cited.
Lawrence Hartmann is a child and adult psychiatrist, social-psychiatric activist, and former President of the American Psychiatric Association (APA). Hartmann played a central role in the APA's 1973 decision to remove homosexuality as a diagnosis of mental illness from its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. This change decisively changed the modern era of LGBTQ rights by providing support for the overturning of laws and prejudices against homosexuals and by advancing gay civil rights, including the right to immigrate, to adopt, to buy a home, to teach, to marry, and to be left alone.
Elisabeth Rozetta Geleerd Loewenstein was a Dutch-American psychoanalyst. Born to an upper-middle-class family in Rotterdam, Geleerd studied psychoanalysis in Vienna, then London, under Anna Freud. Building a career in the United States, she became one of the nation's major practitioners in child and adolescent psychoanalysis throughout the mid-20th century. Geleerd specialized in the psychoanalysis of psychosis, including schizophrenia, and was an influential writer on psychoanalysis in childhood schizophrenia. She was one of the first writers to consider the concept of borderline personality disorder in childhood.