Jordan B. Peterson, Ph.D.
Department of Psychology
University of Toronto
Jordan B. Peterson, Ph.D. Department of Psychology University of Toronto |
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Author of Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of
Belief (Routledge, 1999) TV Ontario ran a 13-part series based on Maps of Meaning (PSY334S) in 2004. Clips of that series can be seen here. |
I am a clinical psychologist, licensed in Massachusetts and Ontario, and see clients on a relatively regular basis. I am a professor at the University of Toronto, and have been since 1998. Before that, I was a professor at Harvard University, from 1993-1998. I completed my graduate and post-doctoral work at McGill University, under the supervision of Dr. Robert O. Pihl, studying alcoholism and aggression. I am currently interested in the formal assessment and theoretical nature of self-deception, construing it as voluntary failure of exploration rather than as repression (although both mechanisms appear to obtain), and also do experimental work on creativity, achievement, personality, narrative and motivation. I published a book with Routledge, Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief, in 1999.
A copy of my CV is appended here, for those who might be interested.
An essentially complete selection of my publications, in pdf format (readable with Adobe Acrobat (www.adobe.com)) is available here. I would particularly recommend Complexity management theory: Motivation for ideological rigidity and social conflict, recently published by Cortex.
Three graduate students are currently working with me at the University of Toronto.
B. Undergraduate Courses
Psy 430S: Personality Seminar: Self-Deception: A Comprehensive Analysis
The following conclusions have been reached by psychologists interested in the issue of self-deception and its sister concept, repression.
Psy430S has been designed to allow interested students to take a truly in-depth look at one of the most permanently contentious issues in psychology.
It was issues of personality and its transformations that thrust psychology into the forefront of popular consciousness during the twentieth century. Psy230S addresses these intensely interesting topics.
The first half of the course deals with issues of modern experimental psychology, from a biological standpoint. Our biological understanding of the brain and mind has developed to the point where it is necessary to provide students of personality and a thorough grounding in neuroscience. we will consider issues of motivation and information-processing from a cybernetic standpoint: how do human beings operate in the world? What are their goals, their ends and means? What role do emotions and fundamental motivational states play in adaptation to the environment? How might personality traits and disorders be understood, from within such a framework?
The second half of the course deals with classic clinical issues of personality. The constructivists are dealt with from a viewpoint that is simultaneously developmental and ontological. Freud is dealt with as a theorist of motivated narrative. Discussion of his work is followed by consideration of modern work on narrative construction. The humanists, existentialists, and phenomenologists -- concerned with the relationship between the individual, meaning and health -- are discussed from the perspective of philosophy and political science. In this course, they are considered thinkers who are interested in the content of personal narratives. Jung is dealt with as a thinker concerned with the most profound narratives, which might be considered archetypes manifested in action. The course closes with a discussion of religious narratives.
Psy334S: Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief
The world can be validly construed as forum for action, or as place of things.
No complete world-picture can be generated, without use of both modes of construal. The fact that one mode is generally set at odds with the other means only that the nature of their respective domains remains insufficiently discriminated. Adherents of the mythological world-view tend to regard the statements of their creeds as indistinguishable from empirical "fact," even though such statements were generally formulated long before the notion of objective reality emerged. Those who, by contrast, accept the scientific perspective - who assume that it is, or might become, complete - forget that an impassable gulf currently divides what is from what should be.
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Contact InformationE-mail address: Web address Office phone Office 4046 |
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