The Society for Descriptive Psychology

Contacting SDP Members

(Send email to any of the following members of the Society by clicking on their name.)

Pat Aucoin

David Bender

David describes himself as interested in "clinical topics in general. I can also speak to AA and DP, giving folks the community slant on things."

Ray and Laurie Bergner

Joe Blackbourn

Joe is an Associate Professor in the School of Education at the University of Mississippi (Ole Miss). He trains both preservice and graduate special education teachers, and teaches Educational Research and Advanced Educational Psychology. He has a Ph.D. in Educational Psychology (Mississippi State University, 1985).

His current interests (particularly writing) are in the areas of:

organizational, curricular, and instructional reform,
the philosophical underpinning of what we do in education, ("Who are we?" , "Do we know what we are doing?" , "Do we know why we are doing it?", and "Why are we doing it this way?"),
tying Dr. Deming and Peter Senge's work into educational philosophy, practice, and processes, and
building a focus on continuous improvement and quality at all levels of the educational system.

Jonathan Blaine

Robert Brill

Robert Brill is a clinical psychologist at the Kaiser Permanente office in Boulder, Colorado. He also has a private practice in Boulder, Colorado emphasizing help with mood and behavior problems in adults, couples, and parenting skills training. Dr. Brill was supervised by Dr. Peter G. Ossorio and applies the ideas of Descriptive Psychology and pre-empirical psychology in his professional work. He is the 2004-2005 President of the Society for Descriptive Psychology. Dr. Brill received his B.A. in 1976 from the University of Colorado in Boulder, Colorado. He received a Master’s Degree in counseling psychology from the University of Northern Colorado in 1980 and, a doctorate in clinical psychology from The Fielding Institute in 2001. Dr. Brill can be reached at drbobbrill@comcast.net or 303 449-7154.

Thomas A. Browdy

Reverend Roderick Brown

Karen Brown

Steve Byers

Dick Carerra

Jan Collier

Greg Colvin

Greg's interests include "software engineering, artificial intelligence, spirituality, and most anything else Descriptive."

Keith E. Davis is Chairman of the Department of Psychology at the University of South Carolina, and Associate Editor of Personal Relationships. He received his Ph.D. in social psychology from Duke University in 1963, and met Peter Ossorio in 1962 as a brand new assistant professor in the Psychology Department of the University of Colorado, Boulder. According to Keith:

``That first year we had adjacent offices and talked often about intentionality, the perception of persons, and related topics. These conversations were perplexing because Peter always had a different slant on things in the discipline than I was used to hearing, but I became convinced that he was onto something. Reading the early drafts of "Persons" (1965) and reading materials for his course in personality assessment made me convinced that there was something profound different and potentially useful about what later came be called Descriptive Psychology. Then we called it "Pete's stuff."

As the number of students who had taken Pete's classes and worked with him on dissertations grew, we began to examine how to formalize the benefits of getting together to share ideas and insights and most of all to learn from Pete. Thus the founding the Society in 1978 in Boulder. My primary involvement with the Society has been as the founding editor of Advances in Descriptive Psychology, the series of edited volumes that gave practitioners of DP a chance to do their stuff without the substantial compromises that publishing in the mainstream psychology journals had shown to be required. My own research areas are personal relationships, friendship, love, and relationship break-ups.''

Contact information:
Department of Psychology
University of South Carolina
Columbia, SC 29208
(803) 777-4263
FAX (803) 777-9558
email: Keith E. Davis

Rich Driscoll

Author Richard Driscoll received his Ph.D. from the University of Colorado in 1974. He is a Media Resource with the American Psychological Association, and the Programs Director for the American Test Anxieties Association (amtaa.org). Dr. Driscoll is the author of 4 books, over 20 professional and popular articles, and 4 successful anxiety reduction training programs (see Vita).

He is a practicing psychologist with Westside Psychology in Knoxville, Tennessee. His website is www.peacewithmyself.com, and he can be reached at drRich@peacewithmyself.com.

Cathy and Jerry Felknor

Melody Fifer

Ron Fillingim

John Forward

John is on the faculty of the Department of Psychology at the University of Colorado at Boulder. His long-term interests are in Human Services Organization and Services to families with seriously emotionally disturbed kids. He is also interested in volunteer organizations for court kids, which include agencies and private business and community groups.

His recent activities include a Descriptive Psychology reformulation of prejudice, and preliminary data on high tech workers' responses to rapid technological and organizational change.

Reg Garcia

Heather Holmes-Lonergan

Jim and Garnet Holmes

James R. Holmes began working with Peter G. Ossorio in 1963 and completed his Ph.D. in clinical psychology at the University of Colorado in 1975. He is currently Director of the Counseling Center and Associate Professor of Psychology at The University of West Florida and has a private practice in clinical psychology with his wife, Garnet, in Pensacola, Florida.

He has served on the Editorial Board of Advances in Descriptive Psychology and is now the Editor of the Bulletin of the Society for Descriptive Psychology. He was President of the Society in 1988-89.

His work in Descriptive Psychology has focused on its applications to psychotherapy, depression and other types of psychopathology, family dynamics especially in step-families, development of children, and parenting. In recent years, Garnet and Jim have made extensive use of the resources of Descriptive Psychology in developing a school which provides an alternative for children whose needs are not being met in traditional school settings. Finally Jim has also been active in teaching Descriptive Psychology for the past 20 years.

Sonja Holt

Institute for Human Studies
5460 Ward Road
Suite 200
Arvada, CO 80002

I work as a neuropsychologist at UM Hospitals. I am now the Director of the Division of Rehabilitation Psychology and Neuropsychology. I also direct and provide care as part of a day treatment program for individuals with acquired cognitive deficits associated with neurotrauma or disease. I restrict myself to non-progressive disorders, such as stroke, infectious diseases, or brain trauma, rather than, say, Alzheimer's disease or Huntington's Chorea. I would enjoy exchanging ideas with anyone who has an interest in what Descriptive Psychology might have to offer for this type of clinical population.

A second area of interest concerns dissimulation. For a variety of reasons, many people choose (whether deliberately or not), to present themselves as neurologically impaired when, in fact, this is not the case. What might a formal DP approach be to behaviors such as dissimulation, lying, faking, and misrepresentation?

Fernand Lubuguin is an Assistant Professor and the Coordinator of Multicultural Studies at the Graduate School of Professional Psychology at the University of Denver. He is also a clinical psychologist at the Kaiser Permanente Highline Mental Health Clinic in Denver, Colorado. He received his B.A. in 1982 from the University of California at Berkeley. He received his Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology in 1993 from the University of Colorado at Boulder, where he completed his dissertation under the direction of Peter G. Ossorio, Ph.D. He was the President of the Society for Descriptive Psychology from 1997 to 1998. He applies Descriptive Psychology to his professional interests in multiculturalism, acculturation, ethnic identity, and culturally competent psychotherapy.

Philomena Marshall

Christine Marston

C.J. Peek

Wynn is a teacher, provider and supervisor of psychotherapy trained in classical psychoanalysis and in Descriptive Psychology's status dynamics. Concepts that guide his work are presented in his papers Status Dynamics and Psychotherapy and Ordinary Language Essentials of Clinical Psychoanalytic Theory.

John Shaffer

Jack Sidman

F. Richard Singer III: http://www.conceptualstudy.org/plus.html
I am a Professor Emeritus in Mathematics at Webster University in Saint Louis MO. My teaching specialties are in mathematical logic and abstract algebra. My broader interest involves various types of conceptual studies, and this is at the core of my interest in Descriptive Psychology. My deepest interest in Descriptive Psychology relates to its connection with conceptual philosophy. Conceptual philosophy involves a type of activity during which the want parameter is to enhance a conceptual understanding of our most ubiquitous concepts. Unlike most work in philosophy, conceptual philosophy focuses only on concepts rather than on philosophical theories. Instead of asking about the nature of reality, it studies the most ubiquitous concepts we can use for thinking about what happens in the world. Thus, the DP reality concepts are easily integrated into conceptual philosophy. I am especially interested in relating DP and epistemics, the strand of conceptual philosophy that focuses on a purely conceptual study of understanding, and there is a paper about this on the Descriptive Psychology section of my website. I am currently using DP in the design of educational resources that focus on constructivist learning. My work in this regard is on the Constructivist Learning section of my website. I welcome communication about these and any other matters involving DP.


Bruce Smith

Michael Spayd: Michael is particularly interested in Descriptive Psychology applications in the areas of Organizations, Technology and Change Management. He has a consulting practice specializing in helping people in organizations create a deeper experience of community through the use of cutting-edge business practices, transition management and "way cool" information technology.

Carl and Bente Sternberg
Damon Tempey
Walter Torres
Greg Volk
Ralph Wechsler
Gideon and Shirley Weisz
Tom Windham
Carolyn Zeiger
Paul Zeiger

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