Contributors
Author Bios
Loray Daws, PhD
Loray is a Registered Clinical Psychologist with the Health Professions Counsel of South Africa and a Registered Psychologist with the College of Psychologists of British Columbia, Canada. He graduated from the University of Pretoria and served as a full time lecturer from 1998 to 2006. Academically, as well as clinically, Loray’s areas of interest include Mastersonian psychoanalysis and its various research and clinical applications to developmental trauma, philosophy and ethics of mental health and the question of human freedom and agency, and integrating various existential theorists with psychoanalytic traumatology. Never far from the academic field Loray serves as assistant editor for the Global Journal of Health Sciences, evaluator and international advisory board member of the International Journal of Psychotherapy (IJP), assistant editor and psychoanalytic candidate at EPIS (Existential Psychoanalytic Institute and Society) and has published various articles and chapters on dreaming, psychosomatic disorders and the disorders of the self. Loray supervises and teaches in South Africa, Canada, the United States, Australia and Turkey as faculty member of the International Masterson Institute.
Vic Schermer, PhD
Victor L. Schermer is a psychologist in private practice in Philadelphia, PA. He is a Life Fellow of the American Group Psychotherapy Association. Schermer has edited and authored numerous journal articles and eight books, most recently author of Meaning Mind and Self Transformation: Psychoanalytic Interpretation and the Interpretation of Psychoanalysis. He is a frequent presenter of lectures, workshops, and panels internationally.
Daniel Bradley, PhD
Daniel O’Dea Bradley graduated from Gonzaga with degrees in Biology and Philosophy in late 1990s. At the National University of Ireland in Galway, he earned a Masters in Ethics and Cultural Studies and in 2008 was awarded a PhD in philosophy for his dissertation, “The Ambiguity of Desire: Truth and Illusion in the Discernment of the Divine.” Dan is now an Associate Professor at Gonzaga University where he has been teaching in the philosophy department for the last eight years. He regularly teaches Human Nature, Ethics, Phenomenology, and Hermeneutics, along with an array of less regular courses in more specialized areas. His research focuses on the intersection of phenomenology and religion, particularly around questions of presence, desire, illusion, and the sacred. He has recently written on Plato, Richard Kearney, Ricoeur, Augustine, Kierkegaard, Teresa of Avila, Julia Kristeva, Hossein Nasr, and the philosophy of film. In Galway he met his wife Róisín who is now an adjunct lecturer, also in the philosophy department at Gonzaga. The two of them live with their three children in Spokane.
Róisín Lally, PhD
Róisín Lally is teaching in Gonzaga University. She was awarded her PhD from the National University Ireland, Galway, June 2016. Her research interests includes the ontology of technology, contemporary philosophy, specifically Heidegger and Husserl, philosophy of technology, and speculative idealism.
Andrew Nutt, MA
Andrew has a degree in theology and biblical studies from Moody Theological Seminary and currently is finishing a degree in counseling psychology. He is an itinerant speaker and adjunct professor addressing suffering from a phenomenological and theological perspective. His research interest is in intersubjective ontology and the philosophic foundations of counseling theories, specifically relational models of healing. Andrew is a member of EPIS and lives in Alaska when he is not traveling or studying.
Michel Valentin, PhD
Michel Valentin is teaching French literature and textual/critical/postmodern theory at the University of Montana (Missoula). Valentin teaches and applies Lacanian theory to the unravelling of any textual surface (graphic, written, filmic…). He also uses theory to enhance the socio-cultural critique of our contemporaneity and publishes in his area of expertise. He is a long-time EPIS member.
Julian von Will, PhD
I was born in Seattle Washington. I focus on Kant, German idealism, phenomenology, Frankfurt School sociocultural criticism, psychoanalysis, philosophy of war and military history. I try to relate them through a dialectic of reason and contradiction in self-consciousness. I concentrate on Kant, Hegel, Husserl, Heidegger, Adorno, Freud and Clausewitz. I’m trained in psychoanalysis, clinical sexology and family therapy. I just finished a book on Theodor W. Adorno’s metacritique of modern German idealism entitled: Inverted World.
Julio R. Costa, MS
Sociologist with experience in teaching and field research. In his professional career, researched underserved communities in Brazil, developing actions with diversified social actors, such as producer’s associations, municipalities, worker’s unions, government agencies, NGOs and social movements, aiming the building of social capital and the promotion of local development. Has published articles on Sociology of Development, Environmental Responsibility, Participatory Research, Cultural Studies, and the book “To Be More Person: a reading of Otto Rank”, and related topics.
Gary Kolb, PhD
I am a therapist and have worked full-time at Harbor Crest Behavioral Health hospital inpatient treatment center for chemical dependency for 15 years. I have both a PhD and a Psy.D. and have a private psychotherapy practice. I am also a psychoanalytic candidate at the Existential Psychoanalytic Institute and Society. I have been married for 43 years to the same woman, raised 8 adopted children, and re-assemble old car parts in my spare time.
Ellie Ragland, PhD
Ellie Ragland is Professor or English and Honorary French Professor as well as Frederick A. Middlebush Chair at The University of Missouri where she teaches psychoanalytic theory and world literature. She is author of eight authored and edited books on Lacanian psychoanalysis. She is a practicing psychoanalyst and a member of the New Lacanian School and the World Association of Psychoanalysis.