The Silvan S. Tomkins Institute's 1999 Colloquium

Conference Faculty

Beverley G. Buston, PhD is licensed as a Clinical Psychologist in practice with The Westwood Group in Richmond, VA. In addition to providing psychotherapy to adults and couples, she consults within a variety of systems, including teaching Behavioral Science to Family Practice Residents as an Assistant Clinical professor with the Department of Family Medicine of the Medical College of Virginia at the Virginia Commonwealth University, and working with church systems and churches in the Virginia area. Affect Theory has become an integral part of all that she does.

Teresa A. Buczek, PhD is a Licensed Clinical Psychologist with The Westwood Group in Richmond, VA. She works with individual, couples, and families, having been trained both at the Philadelphia Guidance Center and the Palo Alto Veterans Hospital. In the last four years she has begun to apply Affect and Script Theory to the families, couples, and individuals in her clinical practice.

Susan Leigh Deppe, MD, FAPA, is a Clinical Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Vermont and a frequent lecturer on Affect/Script Theory. In her private practice in Burlington, she specializes in the psychotherapy and psychopharmacology of mood and anxiety disorders, affect and script theory, and spirituality. Long involved in patient advocacy, legislation, and public affairs, she has taught community groups, clergy, and health professionals locally and nationally since 1992. A Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, she was for four years the director of a highly successful CME course on religion for its annual meetings.

Jonathan L. Grindlinger, MD is Training Director of the SSTI. He taught in the Williamsport Hospital and Medical Center Family Practice Residency Program from 1988 until 1994, for which in 1993 he was cited as "Teacher of the Year." Jon has taught affect/script theory with Dr. Nathanson at the Cape Cod Institute and also as Visiting Professor at the Williamsport Hospital and Medical Center Family Practice Residency Program. His Lewisburg, PA, private practice focuses on the psychotherapy of individuals and couples. A musician by avocation, he cannot remember a time when he did not own and operate some form of recording studio.

Melvyn A. Hill, PhD grew up in Cape Town, South Africa, and came to the University of Chicago where he completed a PhD in social and political theory under Hannah Arendt. He then served as head of the Division of Social Sciences at York University in Toronto, and completed a PhD in Clinical Psychology. Since the early 80's he has conducted a private practice in Manhattan, and enjoys working with the wide range of people in ones and twos from all over that curious island. He has served on the Executive Committee of the Tomkins Institute, led the committee that revised the first year Study Group syllabus, and leads the new committee revising the second year Study Group syllabus.

Vernon C. Kelly, Jr., MD, was the first Training Director of the Silvan S. Tomkins Institute, in which capacity he built an international network of Study Groups and developed continuing education sponsorship relationships with the American Psychological Association, the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education, and a number of other organizations. He is currently a member of the Silvan S. Tomkins Institute's Executive Committee, an Attending Psychiatrist at Pennsylvania Hospital, and a Fellow of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia. Well known for his clinical work with couples and as therapist/supervisor for many psychotherapists, Dr. Kelly has written extensively about the use of affect/script theory in couples work and taught extensively with Dr. Nathanson. A full exposition of his contributions to these fields appears in his chapter "Affect and Intimacy" in Knowing Feeling: Affect, Script and Psychotherapy.

Verda L. Little, PhD, is a licensed Clinical Psychologist in practice with The Westwood Group in Richmond, VA. She also is an Assistant Clinical Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the Medical College of Virginia of Virginia Commonwealth University. After attending her first Tomkins Institute Colloquim in 1994, Dr. Little organized the Richmond Affect Theory Study Group and serves as Group Coordinator.

Nancy MacConnachie, PhD is a Licensed Clinical Psychologist in private practice with The Westwood Group in Richmond, VA. Her areas of interest include child and family therapy, and the accompanying areas of specialization (child sexual abuse, alcoholism, juvenile justice, attachment issues, etc.) She also works with Family Practice Residents in the Behavioral Medicine curriculum at the Medical College of Virginia. A husband and three children maintain for her a high density experience of affect as well as excellent opportunities to reflect on theory.

Reverend David McShane has officiated at over four hundred funerals during more than forty years in the Presbyterian ministry, experience he characterizes as a wagon load of distress. Over the last twenty years of his ministry his close friendship with Silvan Tomkins and deep respect for affect theory made a profound difference in Dave's life both professionally and personally. Reverend McShane has taught at McCormick Theological Seminary and at Western Michigan University in the College of Health and Human Services. He is now semi-retired, living winters in Florida where he preaches weekly in a mobile home park and summers on a lake in Michigan where he reads, thinks, loafs, and plays scrabble and tournament level paddleball. Dave and his wife Beth, a psychiatric social worker, have four children and six grandchildren.

Robert E. Most, MD, is research coordinator for the Tomkins Institute, and serves on the Research Committee of the Gundersen Lutheran Medical Foundation in La Crosse, Wisconsin, where he also practices psychiatry. Well known locally for his work on "Anxiety Disorders," and the supervision of psychotherapists, Bob presented on the topic of shame, trauma, and EMDR at the 1998 SSTI symposium.

Bruce Pitcairn Murray, MSW, LSW is a psychotherapist in private practice, and an outpatient lead clinician for Advantage Behavioral Systems, in Center City Philadelphia. Since receiving a clinical BS in Mental Health Technology from Hahnemann University in 1977, he has held a variety of direct service positions, including 6 years in a busy hospital Psychiatric Emergency Service. In 1993, he received an MSW from Rutgers, and has now accumulated experience at every level of mental health care, working with clients from school age through the end of life. In more than three years of study with SSTI, his clinical growth in affective knowledge has consistently improved the focus of treatment goals. Bruce believes that awareness of the biological nature of innate affect refines one's strategies for diagnosis and intervention in every aspect of the emotional problems presented by clients.

Donald L. Nathanson, MD, is Executive Director of the Silvan S. Tomkins Institute and Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Jefferson Medical College, although he spends more than a third of his time writing and lecturing internationally. Dr. Nathanson is concerned with the nature and function of emotion, and is known as the leading proponent of the affect/script theory of Silvan Tomkins. His integration of the data of neuroscience, psychology, psychopharmacology, and psychoanalysis into a comprehensive system capable of explaining the full range of human experience has lead to what is now known as The Philadelphia System, a form of psychotherapy that respects all previous systems and methods. Dr. Nathanson has published more than 100 articles and books on emotion, empathy, and psychotherapy and has given hundreds of presentations all over the world. Best known of his writings are the 1987 edited book The Many Faces of Shame; the popular 1992 book Shame and Pride: Affect, Sex, and the Birth of the Self; and the 1996 edited book on the clinical application of these theories, Knowing Feeling: Affect, Script, and Psychotherapy. As lead columnist for the World Wide Web service Behavior OnLine, his Shame and Affect Theory Forum has drawn international respect. At present he is deeply involved in the development of programs to reduce the toxicity of adolescent life that has led to the recent increase in school violence.

Wesley G. Novak, PhD, served as the first Chief Psychologist of the SSTI and remains an active member of the SSTI Executive and Continuing Education Committees. He currently works in full-time independent practice as a Psychologist in Wilmington, Delaware. It is his life-long interest in the psychology of distress that has led to this 1999 SSTI Colloquim.

Edith Shepherd Ott, PhD, is a Licensed Clinical Psychologist in private practice in Richmond, VA, where she works with a wide range of people and problems. She was trained as a Clinical Child Psychologist a long time ago and uses her understanding of developmental issues to work with kids and grown-up kids. Edith has worked in hospital, correctional, and academic settings. She finds that her patients, her garden, and her grandchildren are the source of a rich understanding of life and of her curiosity to learn more. Edith is a student of Affect/Script Theory and enjoys the learning that she experiences every time she meets with her study group in Richmond.

Jeanette Wright, ATR, is the developer of Image Oriented Psychotherapy, which she practices in Des Moines, Iowa, and has written extensively on the use of drawn images as a clue to affective process. She is the founder of Pegasus: A Private Practice, L.C., for which she serves as a psychotherapist, educator, and consultant.