38 thinkers, books, and ideas connected to this field.
American psychiatrist who developed cognitive therapy — the most empirically validated psychotherapy — as a treatment for depression and subsequently for anxiety, personality disorders, and psychosis.
American psychiatrist who developed Bioenergetic Analysis — extending Wilhelm Reich's body-oriented work into a systematic therapy.
American psychiatrist and founder of Healthy Gamer GG who applies clinical psychiatry and Vedic philosophy to help gamers and young men struggling with addiction, depression, and lack of purpose.
American network of psychiatric clinics founded by Dr. Daniel Amen — using SPECT brain imaging as a primary diagnostic tool — the largest brain imaging clinic network in the US.
American psychiatrist — Stanford Medical School — chief of the Stanford Addiction Medicine Dual Diagnosis Clinic — author of Dopamine Nation — who became one of the most prominent public voices on addiction and the opioid epidemic.
Scott Alexander's Substack — successor to Slate Star Codex — combining rigorous statistical reasoning, psychiatric expertise, and intellectual humility to produce the most influential writing in the rationalist/EA community.
Dutch-American psychiatrist — founder of the Trauma Research Foundation — author of The Body Keeps the Score — who brought somatic (body-based) trauma therapy to mainstream attention and is the most cited psychiatrist on trauma.
American psychiatrist at the University of Virginia who is the world's leading researcher of near-death experiences — developing the Greyson Scale for measuring NDE depth, co-editing The Handbook of Near-Death Experiences, and writing After: A Doctor Explores What Near-Death Experiences Reveal About Life and Beyond.
American psychiatrist and neuroscientist — George Washington University — co-author of The Molecule of More — who explores the neurochemistry of desire, creativity, and addiction.
British pediatrician and psychoanalyst who developed the object relations theory of early development — introducing the concepts of the transitional object, the good-enough mother, and the holding environment.
Anna Lembke's 2021 book — explaining addiction through the brain's dopamine balance mechanism and arguing that modern life's overabundance of pleasure-inducing stimuli has triggered a mass addiction epidemic — a clinical psychiatrist's account that became a popular bestseller.
American psychiatrist and founder of Amen Clinics — whose SPECT brain imaging approach to psychiatric diagnosis has been both influential and controversial — popularizing the idea that psychiatric conditions have visible neurological correlates.
Swiss psychiatrist and director of the Burghölzli psychiatric hospital in Zurich who coined the term 'schizophrenia' and 'autism' — and who was Jung's supervisor and initially a supporter of Freudian psychoanalysis before distancing himself from the movement.
Martiniquais-born psychiatrist and political philosopher who became the foremost theorist of decolonization — analyzing the psychological and political dimensions of colonial domination.
Swiss-Canadian psychiatrist and historian — author of The Discovery of the Unconscious — who wrote the most comprehensive history of dynamic psychiatry from Mesmer through Freud, Jung, Adler, and Janet.
British psychiatrist and literary scholar who argues that the two hemispheres of the brain attend to the world in fundamentally different ways — and that Western civilization has become pathologically dominated by the left hemisphere.
Canadian-American psychiatrist at the University of Virginia who spent 40 years investigating children who claimed to remember previous lives — documenting over 3,000 cases and identifying over 40 where birthmarks corresponded to wounds on the previous personality — whose work remains the most systematic scientific investigation of reincarnation.
American psychiatrist at the University of Virginia who directs the Division of Perceptual Studies (DOPS) and continues Ian Stevenson's research into children who report memories of previous lives — extending the work to American cases and publishing Life Before Life and Return to Life.
British psychiatrist who developed attachment theory — the most influential account of emotional development — arguing that the attachment bond between infant and caregiver is a biological necessity with lifelong consequences.
Harvard professor of psychiatry who investigated alien abduction experiences and concluded — controversially for his academic career — that the abductees were not mentally ill and that their experiences pointed to something real beyond ordinary psychology.
German-American psychiatrist who developed a feminist critique of Freudian psychoanalysis and an original account of neurosis based on basic anxiety and the idealized self.
German-Swiss philosopher and psychiatrist who developed existential philosophy as a mode of clarifying the conditions of human existence and introduced the concept of the Axial Age — the period of simultaneous spiritual transformation across civilizations.
Viktor Frankl's existential psychotherapy positing that the primary human motivation is the search for meaning — and that existential neurosis arises from a failure to find meaning.
American psychiatrist who co-developed the Tools therapeutic framework with Barry Michels — a set of specific psychological exercises for overcoming resistance, pain, and self-limitation — and who became widely known through Jonah Hill's Netflix documentary Stutz.
German-Austrian psychiatrist who wrote Psychopathia Sexualis (1886) — the first systematic scientific classification of sexual disorders — coining the terms sadism, masochism, and fetishism, and establishing sexology as a medical discipline.
American psychiatrist and blogger — author of Slate Star Codex (2013–2020) and Astral Codex Ten (2021–) — the most influential blogger in the rationalist community — whose writing on medicine, psychology, AI, and epistemology has shaped a generation of tech and AI thinking.
Scott Alexander's blog (predecessor to Astral Codex Ten) — the defining intellectual publication of the rationalist community, known for its exhaustive steelmanning, epistemic standards, and synthetic intelligence.
Czech-American psychiatrist who founded transpersonal psychology with Abraham Maslow and developed Holotropic Breathwork — a non-drug method for accessing non-ordinary states of consciousness.
American psychiatrist and Jungian analyst who co-runs Chiron Publications — a major Jungian publishing house — contributing to the availability of Jungian texts and the dissemination of analytical psychology.
Bessel van der Kolk's 2014 book — arguing that trauma is stored in the body's nervous system and that somatic therapies (EMDR, yoga, theater) can heal what talk therapy cannot — the best-selling psychiatry book of the 2010s.
Henri Ellenberger's 1970 magnum opus — tracing the history of dynamic psychiatry from Mesmer through Freud, Jung, Adler, and Janet — the most comprehensive history of the unconscious concept.
British psychiatrist and cultural critic (pen name of Anthony Daniels) who worked in a Birmingham prison and inner-city hospital and writes on the culture of poverty, welfare dependency, and the intellectual corruption of the chattering classes — Life at the Bottom, Our Culture What's Left of It.
Austrian psychiatrist who survived Auschwitz and Dachau — losing his wife, parents, and brother — and whose Man's Search for Meaning (1946) argued that the search for meaning (not pleasure or power) is the primary human motivation, founding logotherapy.
Austrian psychiatrist who was a pioneering figure in character analysis and body-oriented psychotherapy before becoming increasingly eccentric and developing the pseudoscientific orgone energy theory.
Frankl's claim that the primary motivational force in human beings is not pleasure (Freud) or power (Adler) but the search for meaning — and that frustration of this will produces existential distress.
American psychiatrist who studied Chinese thought reform programs and Nazi doctors — developing the concept of 'thought reform' (brainwashing) and identifying the eight criteria of totalist environments in cults and totalitarian regimes.
Robert Jay Lifton's 1961 study of Chinese Communist thought reform programs — developing the eight criteria of totalist environments that became the standard framework for understanding cults and totalitarian indoctrination.
Miriam Grossman is an American child and adolescent psychiatrist and author known for her medical-clinical critique of gender ideology as applied to children and adolescents. She argues that the medical and psychiatric establishment has abandoned evidence-based practice in treating gender dysphoria, particularly in minors, and that affirmative-only care protocols cause harm.