Members of the Board of Directors
Ty C. Colbert, Ph.D. is the president of the Center for Psychological Alternatives to Biopsychiatry (PAB). After graduating with a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering, Ty Colbert soon realized that his desire to help people didn't fit a career in engineering. Feeling for those who were struggling emotionally, Ty entered the University of Southern California, eventually graduating with his doctorate in Counseling Psychology. He spent the next fifteen years as a clinical psychologist, mostly in private practice. He recently closed his private practice to concentrate on the development of PAB.
His books and booklets have helped to unravel the mystery and confusion behind such emotions as shame and anger (Why Do I Feel Guilty When I've Done Nothing Wrong?), as well as the so-called disorders of depression, mania, and schizophrenia (Rape of the Soul and Depression & Mania: Friends or Foes?). His most recent two books Broken Brains or Wounded Hearts and Blaming Our Genes have been written with the purpose of unraveling the fallacies behind the chemical imbalance model and the genetic model of mental illness. His popular lecture "The Four False Pillars of Biopsychiatry" has helped the general public and professionals alike to develop a correct understanding of the myth behind the medical model.
Kenneth Gergen, Ph.D is Professor of Psychology at Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania.
He has been a major influence in social psychology since his and P. Davies's 1967 book on The Self. His role since then has been as an increasingly penetrating and respected critic of psychological practice. He has written 12 books including the 1991 award-winning The Saturated Self. Among his more recent books are Therapy as Social Construction (co-edited with S. McNamee), 1992; Realities and Relationships: Soundings in Social Construction, 1994; the 2nd Edition of Toward Transformation in Social Knowledge; and An Invitation to Social Construction.
Loren R Mosher, MD, (1933 – 2004) held for over a decade a central position in American psychiatric research. He was the first Chief of the Center for Studies of Schizophrenia at the National Institute of Mental Health, 1969-1980. He founded the Schizophrenia Bulletin and for ten years, he was its Editor-in-Chief. He led the Soteria Project.
The Soteria research demonstrated that there is a better way: A better way to treat schizophrenia and other psychoses that destroy the lives of so many young people. The Soteria research showed that the prevalent excessive destructive psychiatric drugging of all these young people is a huge and tragic mistake. The psychiatric establishment was offended. Prestige and Money won. Truth and Love lost.
The success! of Soteria was the reason that Dr Mosher was forced to leave his key position in American psychiatry. Dr Mosher is currently Director of Soteria Associates, San Diego, and Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, School of Medicine, University of California, San Diego.
Alvin R. Mahrer Ph.D., is Professor Emeritus of the school of Psychology, University of Ottawa. He is the author of 13 books and approximately 300 other publications. In addition to the Distinguished Psychologist Award, Dr Mahrer is one of four recipients of the first "Living Legends in Psychotherapy" award both bestowed by the American Psychological Association's Division of Psychotherapy.
Dr. Mahrer has developed Experiential Psychotherapy, a form of existential-humanistic therapy and is one of the main voices calling for psychotherapy integration. This is the subject of his 1989, now classic book – The Integration of Psychotherapies – A guide for Practicing Psychotherapists.” Two of his recent books are: The Complete Guide To Experiential Psychotherapy, 1996. (John Wiley & Sons, Inc.) and Becoming The Person You Can Become: The Complete Guide To Self Transformation, 2002. (Bull Publications).
Thierry Melchior
is a psychologist, Licensed in Philosophy (U.L.B.) and
Licensed in Psycho-pedagogy (U.E.M.). He lives in Brussels, Belgium (European
Union). He works in the Mental Health Service of the University of Brussels
and in private practice in Brussels.
After having worked in a psychoanalytical framework, he moved to other approaches, in the middle of the eighties, particularly Ericksonian Hypnotherapy and Brief Psychotherapy. He has been one of the founding members of the Milton H. Erickson Institute of Belgium, then of the Milton Erickson Institute of the North of France (in Lille). He was the founding president of the Belgian Society of Hypnosis (French-speaking).
He provides workshops, training and seminars in Hypnotherapy and Brief Therapy in Belgium and other countries. He has authored many papers dealing with hypnosis and brief therapy (some on them are available online) and the book Créer le réel, hypnose et thérapie, ֹeditions du Seuil, 1998.
Michael Shernoff, MSW, CSW, ACSW, Diplomate in Clinical Social Work. I have been an openly gay psychotherapist in private practice, serving the community since 1975. If you would like to e-mail me with a question mailto:mshernoff@aol.com
I am on the faculty at Columbia University School of Social Work, and am the online mental health expert at TheBody.com, the world's most comprehensive HIV/AIDS web site. I have written extensively on the subject of mental health issues pertaining to gay men, and have international recognition as a well respected expert in the field of psychotherapy and counseling with gay men.
My most recent book is HIV Treatment: Mental Health aspects of Antiviral Therapy, published by University of California San Francisco AIDS Health Project, (co-authored with Raymond Smith). I have edited: AIDS and Mental Health Practice: Clinical and Policy Issues; Gay Widowers: Life After the Death of a Partner; The Sourcebook on Lesbian/Gay Health Care, Volumes 1 and 2; Counseling Chemically Dependant People With HIV Illness; Human Services For Gay People: Clinical and Community Practice; and co-edited with Walt Odets The Second Decade of AIDS: A Mental Health Practice Handbook. I am a Senior Consulting Editor for The Journal of Gay and Lesbian Social Services, and a Contributing Editor for In The Family magazine.
Uri Wernik Psy.D, the founder of Transtherapy, is a senior clinical and medical psychologist and certified sex therapist. He is in private practice in Jerusalem. His work experience includes directing the Misgav Ladach Hospital Sex Therapy Clinic; heading a unit for autistic adolescents in a psychiatric hospital; staff and student psychologist in the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design and group leader for bereaved parents of fallen soldiers.
Dr. Wernik is a graduate of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (M.A.) and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (Psy.D). He is a founding member and former chairman of The Israeli Society of Sex Therapy. He is the author of seven books in Hebrew, among them I Qohelet (Ecclesiastes): Psychologist Philosopher Poet. He has published articles in professional journals on sexuality, psychology of religion and creativity.
Linda J. Young, Ph.D. In 1978, I received my Bachelor of Arts degree from Brown University and went on to receive my Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University of Michigan. After this, I became interested in working psychoanalytically with individuals diagnosed as severely disturbed and obtained my post doctoral fellowship training at the Detroit Psychiatric Hospital where I subsequently went on to become a staff member. At the Detroit Psychiatric Institute, (DPI) I worked primarily on the inpatient ward where I also taught and supervised psychology interns. It was at DPI where I began to seriously appreciate the incompatibility between working to understand the inner mind of the individual and at the same time forcing that understanding into a medical model in which the individual would be diagnosed, required to take psychotropic medication and hospitalized against his/her will. An article I wrote describing these incompatibilities – Petitioning for Involuntary hospitalization and the Involuntary Petitioning of Psychoanalysis - can be found at http://www.academyanalyticarts.org/
In 1995 I became a founding member of the Academy for the Study of the Psychoanalytic Arts, an organization dedicated to redefining psychoanalysis as a discipline and way of thinking about people and working with them, that existed outside of a medical model. I have served as the organization’s Vice-President since that time. I believe that outdated, positivistic notions of science and medicine, which continue to define and determine the field, should not be the only intellectual frame for understanding and defining the work. I believe as well, that individuals should have the right to practice privately, without interference and externally imposed standards of care and practice that do not correspond to their way of philosophically understanding the work and practicing. I have presented papers at various conferences including the Michigan Society for Psychoanalytic Psychology, the Academy for the Study of the Psychoanalytic Arts, the Michigan Psychoanalytic Council, the APA Division 39 (psychoanalysis), and the International Federation for Psychoanalytic Psychology. My papers have been published on the Academy Website, the MSPP News, and Psychologist-Psychoanalyst (the official Publication of Division 39 of the American Psychological Association.) I am in the independent practice of psychoanalysis in Ann Arbor and Northville, Michigan where I teach, supervise and engage in the practice of psychoanalytic psychotherapy. Individuals with whom I work are not diagnosed by me, encouraged to take medication, or viewed as being “sick” and in need of being “cured”. Rather, I view the individuals who seek my consultation as people who are creatively playing out on the stage of their everyday lives, internal, unconsciously determined conflicts and solutions which we endeavor to articulate, interrogate, and understand as best we can.