Jordan B. Peterson, Ph.D. Department of Psychology University of Toronto

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, along with three TVO Big Ideas lectures, under Video Background.

Contents

• Biographical Information
• Publication Reprints
• Lab Web Page
• Current Projects
• Current Courses
• Contact Information

Biographical Information

 I am a professor at the University of Toronto, and have been since 1998. I am also a clinical psychologist, and see clients on a regular basis. 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 interested in mythology, religion, narrative, neuroscience, personality, deception, creativity, intelligence 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.

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Publication Reprints

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, published in Cortex.

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Lab Web Pages

Four graduate students are currently working with me at the University of Toronto.

• Caitlin Burton
• Alex Guindon
• Xiaowen Xu
• Shona Tritt

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Current Projects

• Self-Deception: Experimental and Theoretical Analysis
• Psychology of Myth and Religion (see Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief)
• Motivation for Social Conflict (see Individual Motivation for Group Aggression: Psychological, Mythological, and Neuropsychological Perspectives)
• Predisposition to Alcoholism and Drug Abuse
• Prediction and Analysis of Academic, Industrial and Creative Performance

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Current Courses

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A. Graduate Course
 

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 I am not offering any graduate courses this year. Most frequently, I have offered an advanced version of Psy434, listed below.

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.

• It cannot logically exist.
• It is extremely pervasive.
• It is a hallmark of the healthy mind.
• It is at the core of the process that generates mental illness.

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.

Psy230S: Personality and its Transformations

It was personality theory that thrust psychology into the forefront of popular consciousness during the 20th century.

Psychology 230S is a course that concentrates to a large degree on philosophical and neuroscientific issues, related to personality. It is divided into five primary topics, following an introduction and overview. The first half of the course deals with classic, clinical issues of personality; the second, with biological and psychometric issues. Students who are interested in clinical psychology, moral development, functional neurobiology and psychometric theory should adapt well to the class. An intrinsic interest in philosophical issues is a necessity.

Psy434S: Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief

The world can be validly construed as forum for action, or as place of things.

• The former manner of interpretation - more primordial, and less clearly understood - finds its expression in the arts or humanities, in ritual, drama, literature, and mythology. The world as forum for action is a place of value, a place where all things have meaning. This meaning, which is shaped as a consequence of social interaction, is implication for action, or - at a higher level of analysis - implication for the configuration of the interpretive schema that produces or guides action.

• The latter manner of interpretation - the world as place of things - finds its formal expression in the methods and theories of science. Science allows for increasingly precise determination of the consensually-validatable properties of things, and for efficient utilization of precisely-determined things as tools (once the direction such use is to take has been determined, through application of more fundamental narrative processes).

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 Information E-mail address: jordanbpeterson (at) yahoo.com Web address http://psych.utoronto.ca/~peterson/welcome.htm Office phone 416-978-7619 FAX number 416-978-4811 Office 4046 100 St. George Street Toronto, Ontario Canada, M5S 3G3

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Last revised: January 22, 2011.

This document has been requested times since September 14, 2005.