Louis A. Sass has strong interdisciplinary interests involving the intersection of clinical psychology with philosophy, the arts, and literary studies. His publications include critical analyses of psychoanalytic theory; phenomenological studies of schizophrenia; and articles on notions of truth and of the self in psychoanalysis, hermeneutic philosophy, and postmodernism. He is the author of "Madness and Modernism: Insanity in the Light of Modern Art, Literature, and Thought" and "The Paradoxes of Delusion: Wittgenstein, Schreber, and the Schizophrenic Mind." He also co-edited "Hermeneutics and Psychological Theory." Dr. Sass has been a member of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton, N.J., and was awarded fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Fulbright Foundation. Currently he is a fellow of the New York Institute for the Humanities and a research associate in the history of psychiatry at Cornell Medical College. He is also a research associate in the Center for Cognitive Science and serves on the faculty of the Program in Comparative Literature, both at Rutgers. In 1998-99 he was president of the Division of Psychology and the Arts of the American Psychological Association. In 2006-07, he was president of the Division of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology of APA.
Research Interests and Clinical Work Severe psychopathology, especially schizophrenic, schizoid, and borderline conditions; philosophy and psychology: phenomenology, hermeneutics, psychoanalytic theory; psychology and the arts
Instructor for the Following Courses
- Existential, Phenomenological, & Hermeneutic Approaches to Clinical Psychology
- Philosophy and Systems of Psychology
- Personality Assessment (adult)
- Self, Psychopathology, and the Modern Age
Email: lsass@rci.rutgers.edu