Robert is an Emeritus Professor of Psychology at Pacifica Graduate Institute. Author of seven books including his most recent Leaning toward the Poet: Eavesdropping on the Poetry of Everyday Life, he has contributed essays to numerous edited volumes, has published more than fifty articles in psychology, philosophy, literary and education journals, has done radio and TV discussions as well as online interviews and webinars.
A popular speaker, he has given keynote addresses at conferences, lectured at universities and professional societies and conducted workshops in the U.S., Europe, Australia, South Africa, Canada and New Zealand.
His areas of interests are the psychology of technology especially in terms of climate issues and social media, grief and the healing power of poetry, the art and practice of psychotherapy, the wisdom and value of dreams, the art of memoir writing, and the relations between psychology and the humanities.
He has recently completed his latest book, The Frankenstein Prophecies: The Monsters Tale - 8 Questions and Replies, and is working on a memoir about his life in psychology: Wandering in Wonder: On Becoming and Un –Becoming a Psychologist.
Psychology as a Vocation
Personal Statement
There is a thin place where dream and event meet, a pivotal place where, as the poet John Keats once noted, the world is the vale of soul making. My life in psychology has been a journey in the world in search of those threshold places and their momentary epiphanies. Along the way I have come to realize that psychology has been more than a profession I chose. It has been a vocation that chose me. I have been a wanderer drawn to those fringe areas where psychology spills into philosophy and poetry, where history and literature percolate with the shared collective dreams of soul, and where the splendor of the world’s simple displays can awaken a forgotten, lost and elemental sense of home.
