Michael Guy Thompson, PhD, received his psychoanalytic training from RD Laing and associates at the Philadelphia Association in London and served as the organization’s administrator from 1973–1980. He is Personal and Supervising Analyst and Faculty Member, Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California, San Francisco, and Founder and Director of the New School for Existential Psychoanalysis, a virtual two-year training program modeled on his training with RD Laing, based in San Francisco. He is the author of over 100 journal articles, book chapters, and reviews, as well as numerous books, including The Truth About Freud’s Technique (1994), The Ethic of Honesty (2004), The Legacy of R. D. Laing: An Appraisal of His Contemporary Relevance (2015), and The Death of Desire: An Existential Study in Sanity and Madness (2017 2nd ed.), an extensively revised and expanded edition of the original, published by Routledge. His current book project, Essays in Existential Psychoanalysis: On the Primacy of Authenticity, will be published by Routledge this year. He lives in Berkeley, California.

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