The Science of Psychotherapy Academy

Joseph LeDoux is the Henry and Lucy Moses Professor of Science at NYU in the Center for Neural Science, and he is the director of the Emotional Brain Institute at NYU. He also a Professor of Psychiatry and Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at NYU Langone Medical School. His work is focused on the brain mechanisms of memory and emotion and he is the author of The Emotional Brain, Synaptic Self, and Anxious. LeDoux has received a number of awards, including William James Award from the Association for Psychological Science, the Karl Spencer Lashley Award from the American Philosophical Society, the Fyssen International Prize in Cognitive Science, Jean Louis Signoret Prize of the IPSEN Foundation, the Santiago Grisolia Prize, the American Psychological Association Distinguished Scientific Contributions Award, and the American Psychological Association Donald O. Hebb Award. His book Anxious received the 2016 William James Book Award from the American Psychological Association. LeDoux is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the New York Academy of Sciences, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. He is also the lead singer and songwriter in the rock band, The Amygdaloids and performs with Colin Dempsey as the acoustic duo So We Are.

I am a philosopher at the City University of New York. In particular I am a Professor in the Philosophy Program and an Adjunct Professor in the Psychology Program at LaGuardia Community College (for more on philosophy at LaGuardia see the NPR story on our program). In addition I am also a member of the Cognitive Neuroscience faculty at the Graduate Center, CUNY. My work is focused on the philosophy of mind, consciousness studies, and the foundations of cognitive science but I also have interests and projects in the philosophy of language, metaethics, philosophy of physics, logic and the philosophy of logic, as well as the history of philosophy. I earned my Ph.D. in Philosophy with a concentration in Cognitive Science from the CUNY Graduate Center in 2008. From 2002-2003 I was at the University of Connecticut, where I earned my M.A. in Philosophy (and did some work in the Behavioral Neuroscience Laboratory led by James Chrobak), and from 2000-2002 I was at San Francisco State University where I worked in the Cognitive Psychophysiology Laboratory led by Mark Geisler (while officially enrolled in the philosophy program).

Richard Hill began his professional life in the performing arts and is now a practicing psychotherapist, author, educator, and Clinical Science Director and Managing Editor at the Science of Psychotherapy. Richard returned to intellectual studies at 42 (1996) achieving a B.A. majoring in linguistics, followed by 3 Masters Degrees in Social Ecology, Education, and Brain and Mind Sciences and is now a PhD candidate researching the nature of the person-responsive approach in therapy. His latest book is co-authored with Matthew Dahlitz, The Practitioner’s Guide to the Science of Psychotherapy. Richard enjoyed the good fortune to be mentored by the esteemed Ernest Rossi, PhD who introduced the field of Psychosocial Genomics and is a member of the international research team that studies the impact of therapeutic practice on the genetic level. Richard co-authored The Practitioner’s Guide to Mirroring Hands with Rossi. His main theoretical proposals concern – The Winner-Loser World Theory; the Curiosity Approach: and the Possibility Solution – which are explored in his numerous books and book chapters. Richard is active internationally including his role as Science Director for CIPPS college in Salerno, Italy, and course consultant at the University Fernando Pessoa in Portugal. He is also Patron of the Australian Society of Clinical Hynotherapists.