Awais Aftab, MD, is a psychiatrist and clinical assistant professor of psychiatry at Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio, USA. He leads the popular interview series “Conversations in Critical Psychiatry” for Psychiatric Times, which engages with prominent commentators within and outside the profession who have made meaningful criticisms of the status quo. He is currently working on a book adaptation of the interview series for Oxford University Press (2023). 

Haroula Konstantinidou, MD, MRCPsych, is a consultant medical psychotherapist working with complex emotional presentations (personality disorder, complex trauma, treatment resistant depression) across a number of pathways. She is the psychotherapy tutor coordinating training and psychotherapy placements for core and higher trainees and she runs reflective practice groups. Her research interests include integrating psychotherapeutic approaches in general psychiatry and relational aspects of prescribing practices.  

Tanya Marie Luhrmann, PhD, is the Albert Ray Lang Professor of Anthropology at Stanford University, with a courtesy appointment in psychology. Her work focuses on the edge of experience: on voices, visions, the world of the supernatural and the world of psychosis. She has done ethnography on the streets of Chicago with homeless and psychotic women, and worked with people who hear voices in Chennai, Accra and the South Bay. She has also done fieldwork with evangelical Christians who seek to hear God speak back, with Zoroastrians who set out to create a more mystical faith, and with people who practice magic. She uses a combination of ethnographic and experimental methods to understand the phenomenology of unusual sensory experiences, the way they are shaped by ideas about minds and persons, and what we can learn from this social shaping that can help us to help those whose voices are distressing. At the heart of the work is the sense of being called, and its possibilities and burden. 

She was named to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2003, received a John Guggenheim Fellowship award in 2007 and elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2022. When God Talks Back was named a NYT Notable Book of the Year and a Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year. It was awarded the $100,000 Grawemeyer Prize for Religion by the University of Louisville. She has published over thirty OpEds in The New York Times, and her work has been featured in The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, The Times Literary Supplement, Science News, and many other publications. She is the author of Persuasions of the Witch’s Craft, The Good Parsi, Of Two Minds, When God Talks Back, Our Most Troubling Madness, and How God Becomes Real, and is currently at work on a book entitled Voices. 

Kathryn T. Hall, PhD, received her PhD in microbiology and molecular genetics from Harvard University before spending 10 years in the biotech industry tackling problems in drug development, first at Wyeth and then at Millennium Pharmaceuticals, where she became an associate director of drug development. Dr. Hall returned to HMS in 2010, joining the Fellowship in Integrative Medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) in 2012, and receiving a Master’s in Public Health from Harvard School of Public Health in 2014. 

In collaboration with Professor Ted Kaptchuk and other members of the Program in Placebo Studies at HMS, Dr. Hall’s recent research has focused on catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT), an enzyme that metabolizes catecholamines such as dopamine and epinephrine and that has pleiotropic effects in a broad set of diseases and treatments. Among her recent accomplishments is a landmark paper published in PLOS ONE identifying COMT as one of the first genetic markers of placebo response, and a broader review in Trends in Molecular Medicine on the impact of genetics on the placebo response. Her work has led to the coining of the term “placebome”, which was added to Jargonwatch by WIRED magazine in 2015. Her research has been the focus of numerous articles including features in Science, The Atlantic, The Economist, and Discover magazines. 

Alicia Powell, MD, (she/her) is the assistant medical director at Vinfen, a nonprofit health and human services organization providing community-based services to individuals with mental health conditions, intellectual and developmental disabilities, brain injuries, and behavioral health challenges. She also maintains a private practice in Boston. 

Adele Tutter, MD, PhD,. is associate clinical professor of psychiatry, Columbia University; faculty, the Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research; and director, the Psychoanalytic Studies Program of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. She is also faculty, the New York Psychoanalytic Institute. Her interdisciplinary scholarship has earned the American Psychoanalytic Association Menninger, CORST, and Ticho prizes, among others. Dr. Tutter is coeditor (with Leon Wurmser), Grief and its Transcendence: Memory, Identity, and Creativity (Routledge, 2015); editor, The Muse: Psychoanalytic Explorations of Creative Inspiration (Routledge, 2016); and author, Dream House: An Intimate Portrait of the Philip Johnson Glass House (University of Virginia Press, 2016). Currently completing a second monograph, Mourning and Metamorphosis: Poussin’s Ovidian Vision, she sits on the editorial boards of The International Journal of Psychoanalysis, Psychoanalytic Quarterly, and American Imago. She is a regular contributor of art criticism to the Brooklyn Rail and maintains a private practice in Manhattan. 

Kyle Shepard, DO, is a Fellow in hospital-based psychotherapy and psychoanalytic studies at the Austen Riggs Center. Before starting at the Austen Riggs Center he worked as an inpatient attending physician at the Institute of Living where he had the pleasure of teaching medical students, psychiatry residents, and psychology trainees. 

David Mintz, MD, is a staff psychiatrist who joined the Austen Riggs Center in 1996. He presently serves as the director of psychiatric education, the associate director of training, and as a team leader. He also is principal investigator for the research initiative in Psychodynamic Psychopharmacology and author of the book Psychodynamic Psychopharmacology: Caring for the Treatment-Resistant Patient (2022, American Psychiatric Association Publishing). Dr. Mintz also coordinates the Elective in Psychodynamic Psychiatry at the Austen Riggs Center. 

Nancy McWilliams, PhD, teaches at Rutgers University’s Graduate School of Applied & Professional Psychology and practices in Lambertville, New Jersey. She is author of Psychoanalytic Diagnosis (1994, rev. ed. 2011), Psychoanalytic Case Formulation (1999), Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy (2004), and Psychoanalytic Supervision (2021) and is associate editor of both editions of the Psychodynamic Diagnostic Manual (2006, 2017). A former president of Division 39 (Psychoanalysis) of the American Psychological Association, she has been featured in three APA videos of master clinicians. She is on the Board of Trustees of the Austen Riggs Center. Her books are available in 20 languages; she lectures widely both nationally and internationally. 

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