Richard Noll

Richard Noll (born 1959) is a well-known author and clinical psychologist. Currently he is Associate Professor of Psychology at DeSales University in Center Valley, Pennsylvania. He is best known for his publications in the history of psychiatry, including two critical volumes on the life and work of Carl Gustav Jung and his articles on the history of dementia praecox and schizophrenia. He is also known for his publications in anthropology on shamanism. His books and articles have been translated into fourteen foreign languages.

He grew up in Phoenix, Arizona, where he received his education at Brophy College Preparatory, a Jesuit institution. From 1977 to 1979 he studied political science at the University of Arizona. In the fall of 1978 he spent a semester at the United Nations in New York, returning to complete his B.A. in political science in May 1979. He received his Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the New School for Social Research in 1992. Before assuming a position as a professor of psychology at DeSales University in August 2000, he taught and conducted research at Harvard University for four years as a postdoctoral fellow and as Lecturer in History of Science. During the 1995-1996 academic year he was a Visiting Scholar at MIT and a Resident Fellow at the Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology.

In 1994 he received an award for Best Book in Psychology from the Association of American Publishers for his book, The Jung Cult: Origins of a Charismatic Movement. The resulting controversy over the book made front-page headlines worldwide, including a front-page report in the 3 June 1995 issue of The New York Times. Princeton University Press submitted The Jung Cult to the Pulitzer Prize competition that year, without success. Although not a definitive treatment of Jung, the book proved to be paradigmatic, effectively changing the agenda of scholarly debate in Jung studies for the more than a decade that has followed its publication.

In 1994 Richard Noll and his colleague from Ohio State University, anthropologist Kun Shi, explored Manchuria and Inner Mongolia and interviewed the last living Tungus Siberian shamans in the People's Republic of China south of the Amur river. The life, initiatory illnesses, and shamanic training of the last living shaman of the Oroqen people, Chuonnasuan (1927-2000), were published and is also online available.

A second published report of this fieldwork concerning the life and training of the Solon Ewenki shamanss Dula'r (Ao Yun Hua)appeared in the journal Shaman in 2007 (15: 167-174). Noll was introduced to the study of shamanism in the fall of 1980 by the anthropologist Michael Harner, then a professor at the New School for Social Research in New York City.

Noll's forthcoming book, The Rise and Fall of Dementia Praecox, is scheduled to be published by Harvard University Press in 2008.