Richard Noll

Richard Noll (born 1959) is an 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. From 1979 to 1983 he was involved with refugee resettlement for both Church World Service and the International Rescue Committee. From 1985 to 1988 he was a staff psychologist on various wards at Ancora Psychiatric Hospital in Hammonton, New Jersey. 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 acted as a climacteric, effectively changing the agenda of scholarly debate in Jung studies for the more than a decade that has followed its publication.

The backstory to the controversy over Noll's research on Jung can be found in the "Preface of the New Edition" of The Jung Cult published in paperback by Free Press Paperbacks in 1997 and in an article he wrote for a Random House, Inc., promotional publication, At Random, in that same year.

According to an article by Sara Corbett, "The Holy Grail of the Unconscious," published in The New York Times Magazine on Sunday, 20 September 2009, the Jung family's fear of "the specter of Richard Noll" was cited as a contributing factor in the decision to allow Jung's "Red Book" to be edited and published by W.W. Norton in October 2009.^[1]

Chuonnasuan, the last shaman of the Oroqen.

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 story of the life, initiatory illnesses, and shamanic training of the last living shaman of the Oroqen people, Chuonnasuan (1927-2000), was published in 2004 in the Journal of Korean Religions and is also available online.^[2]

A second published report of this fieldwork concerning the life and training of the Solon Ewenki shamaness 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, American Madness: The Rise and Fall of Dementia Praecox, is scheduled to be published by Harvard University Press in 2011.

Erroneous Authorship Attribution

The website 'books.google.com' erroneously attributes to this Richard Noll the authorship of When Catholics Die: Eternal Life Or Eternal Damnation? written by an ex-Catholic who now believes that Roman Catholics go to hell.^[3] That book is authored by a different Richard Noll who is the founder of the television advertising firm Noll & Co., Inc. His correct biography can be found at 'amazon.com'^[4]

Notes

1. ^ Corbett, Sara (20 September 2009). "The Holy Grail of the Unconscious". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/20/magazine/20jung-t.html?pagewanted=5&_r=1&em. Retrieved 22 May 2010. 
2. ^ Noll, Richard; Shi, Kun (2004). "Chuonnasuan (Meng Jin Fu). The Last Shaman of the Oroqen of Northeast China" (pdf). Journal of Korean Religions (6): 135–162. http://www.desales.edu/assets/desales/SocScience/Oroqen_shaman_FSSForumAug07.pdf.  It describes the life of Chuonnasuan, the last shaman of the Oroqen of Northeast China.
3. ^ Noll, Richard (1999-10). When Catholics Die: Eternal Life or Eternal Damnation?. ISBN 9780937422465. http://books.google.com/?id=WDy19YxjYe0C&q=Richard+Noll&dq=Richard+Noll. 
4. ^ http://www.amazon.com/dp/0937422460

Bibliography (selected publications)

• 1983 Shamanism and schizophrenia: A state-specific approach to the "schizophrenia metaphor" of shamanic states. American Ethnologist 10: 443-459.
• 1985 Mental imagery cultivation as a cultural phenomenon: The role of visions in shamanism. Current Anthropology 26:443-461 (with commentary).
• 1989 What has really been learned about shamanism? Journal of Psychoactive Drugs 21: 47-50.
• 1990 Bizarre Diseases of the Mind; Real-Life Cases of Rare Mental Illnesses, Vampirism, Possession, Split Personalities, and More(New York: Berkeley), ISBN 0-425-12172-0
• 1992 Vampires, Werewolves and Demons: Twentieth Century Reports in the Psychiatric Literature(New York: Brunner/Mazel), ISBN 0-87630-632-6
• 1992 The Encyclopedia of Schizophrenia and the Psychotic Disorders (New York: Facts-on-File)
• 1994 The Jung Cult: Origins of a Charismatic Movement(Princeton: Princeton University Press), ISBN 0-684-83423-5
• 1997 Aryan Christ: The Secret Life of Carl Jung (New York: Random House), ISBN 0-679-44945-0
• 1997 The Jung Cult: Origins of a Charismatic Movement (paperback) (New York: Free Press), ISBN 0-684-83423-5
• 1997 "A Christ Named Carl Jung," At Random (ISSN 1062-0036),Volume 6, Number 3, 56-59.
• 1999 Styles of psychiatric practice, 1906-1925: Clinical evaluations of the same patient by James Jackson Putnam, Adolf Meyer, August Hoch, Emil Kraepelin and Smith Ely Jelliffe. History of Psychiatry 10: 145-189.
• 2000 The Encyclopedia of Schizophrenia and Other Psychotic Disorders, second edition (New York: Facts-on-File), ISBN 0-8160-4070-2
• 2004 Historical review: Autointoxication and focal infection theories of dementia praecox. World Journal of Biological Psychiatry 5:66-72.
• 2004 Dementia Praecox Studies (letter to the editor and historical note). Schizophrenia Research 68: 103-104.
• 2006 The blood of the insane. History of Psychiatry 17: 395-418.
• 2006 Haeckel, Ernst Heinrich. In Encyclopedia of Modern Europe: Europe 1789 to 1914--Encyclopedia of the Age of Industry and Empire, Volume 2, edited by John Merriman and Jay Winter (New York: Thomas Gale).
• 2007 (with Kun Shi) A Solon Ewenki shaman and her Abagaldai shaman mask. Shaman: Journal of the International Society for Shamanistic Research (Budapest, Hungary) 15: 37-44.
• 2007 The Encyclopedia of Schizophrenia and Other Psychotic Disorders, third edition (New York: Facts-on-File), ISBN 0-8160-6405-9
• 2009 (with Kun Shi) The last shaman of the Oroqen people of Northeast China. Shaman: Journal of the International Society for Shamanistic Research (Budapest, Hungary) 17: 95-118.
• 2011 American Madness: The Rise and Fall of Dementia Praecox, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2011) ISBN 978-0674047396

See also

• Carl Jung
• Renfield's syndrome
• Dementia praecox
• Oroqen

External links

• Noll's page at www.desales.edu
• http://hpy.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/17/4/395
• Noll, Richard; Shi, Kun (2004). "Chuonnasuan (Meng Jin Fu). The Last Shaman of the Oroqen of Northeast China" (pdf). Journal of Korean Religions (6): 135–162. http://www.desales.edu/assets/desales/SocScience/Oroqen_shaman_FSSForumAug07.pdf. 

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Name	Noll, Richard
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Date of birth	1959
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