Jim received his B.A. in psychology from the College of the Holy Cross, his M.A. and Ph.D. in developmental Psychology from Clark University. His educational background is in Psychoanalysis, Cognitive Development, Phenomenological Psychology, Linguistics, Aesthetics, and Axiology. His principal interest lies in the examination and development of human symbolic capacities, specifically, those processes by which we endow experience with meaning. He is particularly interested in how young children make meaning in their lives and the relationship between these early symbolic capacities and adult spiritual/transpersonal experience, well-being, creativity, intuition, and sensitivity/compassion. He does research on children's drawing and artwork, adult symbolism under special conditions, and the effectiveness of various teaching techniques. At the graduate level, he teaches courses on Altered States of Consciousness, The Body in Human Development, the Phenomenology of Development, and Symbol Formation.

Influential books & authors:

The Denial of Death, Ernest Becker

I and Thou, Martin Buber

Life Against Death, Norman O. Brown

An Essay on Man, Ernst Cassirer

Democracy and Education, John Dewey

The Interpretation of Dreams and Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Sigmund Freud

Being & Time, Martin Heidegger

Magister Ludi and Siddhartha, Hermann Hesse

The Doors of Perception, Aldous Huxley

Critique of Pure Reason, Immanuel Kant

The Culture of Narcissism, Christopher Lasch

The Earthsea Trilogy, Ursula K. LeGuin

Toward a Psychology of Being, Abraham H. Maslow

The Phenomenology of Perception, Maurice Merleau-Ponty

The Equilibration of Cognitive Structures, Jean Piaget

Republic and Timaeus, Plato

Symbol Formation, Heinz Werner and Bernard Kaplan