I am an older psychiatrist in private practice in Shelby, NC. I treat children, adolescents, adults, and the aged, utilizing both psychotherapeutic and pharmacological modalities. I have also attended the Unitarian Universalist Church of Charlotte for many years, and I attended the weekly Philosophy Discussion Group there for over ten years.

My undergraduate education was undertaken at George Washington University in Washington, DC, where I obtained a Bachelor of Science degree with a major in Psychology, and a Master of Science degree in Psychology (Personality Theory). This education was simultaneous with my pre-medical curriculum. I then entered the George Washington University School of Medicine and obtained my Doctor of Medicine (M.D.) in 1961. After a year of mixed medicine internship at the District of Columbia General Hospital, I undertook my psychiatric residency for three years at St. Elizabeths Hospital in Washington, DC. My areas of special interest at that time were psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapy, family psychotherapy, and milieu therapy. During my residency, I developed two therapeutic communities (in which the social structure of the ward is used as a tool in healing and promotion of personal growth). During my training, I undertook several years of personal psychoanalysis.

Following my training in psychiatry, I served as a psychiatrist at the Philadelphia Naval Hospital for two years. I then came to practice at John Umstead Hospital, the state psychiatric hospital in Butner, NC, for two and a half years, during which time I developed another therapeutic community.

I then entered a two-year child psychiatry and community psychiatry fellowship at North Carolina Memorial Hospital in Chapel Hill, where I further studied family psychotherapy and was trained in child psychotherapy. I also became a consultant at the C. A. Dillon School in Butner, the maximum security correctional school for the juvenile justice system, continuing in that role for about five years, treating severely dysfunctional adolescents at the school.

For a half year after the two years of child and community psychiatry training, I returned to work at John Umstead Hospital on an adult unit, and then became the director of the Children and Youth Unit at Cherry Hospital in Goldsboro, NC, another state psychiatric hospital. There I again developed an intensive milieu therapy program (therapeutic community), as well as providing family psychotherapy for many of the children and youth there. After four and a half years, I came to Shelby, NC to become the Director of Clinical Services at the Community Mental Health Center. After two and a quarter years, I began my current private practice of psychiatry, as described above, continuing this since 1979.

During my private practice, I began to utilize my own "anger management paradigm" (later changed to "anger prevention paradigm," to distinguish it from other efforts that became popular) in my work with couples, primarily, but I began to see the general relevance of the paradigm in understanding our most basic societal problems, from intrafamilial and interpersonal relationships to international relationships. Also, I came to identify what I believe to be an alternative model of child rearing, alternative to the standard model (with its many variations). The standard model is my name for that model used unless parenting figures specifically know how to do otherwise by virtue of a set of consistent principles, and practices derived from them, acquired through specific training in child rearing, something that our society does not provide. My clinical experience and the insights obtained from it came after I experienced the problems within my own life as I attempted to participate in rearing two children within the standard model.

Throughout my life, I have maintained a love for philosophy, including epistemology, ontology, and the philosophies of science and ethics. Through my study of various philosophies, including that done in the Philosophy Discussion Group, increasing connections began to occur between philosophical issues and the practical issues mentioned in the last paragraph. As these connections began to occur, I began leading groups in "anger management" and "child rearing," and the coalescence of all of these ideas and activities brought me to the need to write a book, in which this coalescence is described. I use the ideas in the book every day in personal ways that have helped my life to have more meaning and effectiveness, as well as in ways that have helped others.

At the Unitarian Universalist Church of Charlotte, since October 2002, I have conducted an Optimal Living Seminar as the companion to the developing book, and it enriched the book further with the insights and experiences reported by the group members. Just as the book is written "for everyone," so is the seminar designed "for everyone." It deals with our most basic concerns as a species, in as basic a way possible. The book and seminar have been my effort to make use of what I have learned in order to do my part to make the world a better place for everyone, insofar as possible.