David Kronemyer

A.  Background

I grew up a few blocks away from the Western Behavioral Sciences Institute in La Jolla, California.  I was friends with Carl Rogers, its Director.  I collaborated with Jean Mandler (a psychologist at UCSD) on several research projects.  An EEG study I devised with Dr. Laverne Johnson at the San Diego Naval Hospital won first-place in the San Diego Science Fair and the California State Science Fair.  Upon graduating as class valedictorian from Point Loma High School I attended U.C. Berkeley, from which I graduated with great distinction with a B.A. in philosophy.  My area of concentration was philosophy of mind – the nature of mental events and what is involved in phenomena such as language and intentionality.  My advisors were Professors John Searle and Hubert Dreyfus, both of whom became leaders in their respective fields.  As with Warren McCulloch [Embodiments of Mind, p. 143], my background in philosophy of mind instilled in me a number of ideas regarding the neurological bases of mental phenomena such as cognition, memory and emotion.  For example, it is difficult to reconcile work by Damasio et al. with classical theories such as James-Lange, Cannon-Bard, Schacter-Singer and the methodology of Ellis-REBT, much less that of Linehan et al. on BPD using dialectical behavioral therapy.

While an undergraduate at Berkeley I worked for two years with Walter J. Freeman, a Professor of Neurobiology, on his precedent-setting experiments involving the brain’s distributed processing features.  I assisted not only with experimental design but also with surgeries on experimental subjects (rabbits) and the interpretation of experimental results.

I was offered the opportunity to continue studying philosophy at Oxford University.  I had become concerned however about its relationship to actual human experience.  I therefore went to law school at USC and received a J.D. degree.  I became an expert in mental health law and defended over 100 involuntary commitment cases brought under California’s Lanterman-Petris-Short (LPS) Act.  I also volunteered at what then remained of state and county mental health care institutions in Southern California.

I then became an entertainment industry executive (which made for an excellent transition).  I began managing artists and promoting concerts.  I was Vice President of Capitol Records and then Senior Vice President of Atlantic Records.  I segued to the film business and was Executive Vice President of Curb Entertainment; President of Gold Circle Films; and then President of Cerberus Films.

During 1985 – 1990 I was on the adjunct faculty of Southwestern University.  I was a frequent public speaker at industry colloquia.  I wrote a several peer-reviewed articles such as “The ‘New Payola’ and the American Record Industry: Transactions Costs and Precautionary Ignorance in Contracts for Illegal Services” which appeared in the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy.

During 2003 – 2004 I was a Senior Policy Analyst with RAND Corporation in Santa Monica.  I was a member of a team working on two on-going governmentally-funded research studies: does violence in media contribute to adolescent delinquency, and the implications of false-self identities on social networking web-sites.  My primary contributions were chapters critically reviewing literature in the field and discussing the implications of findings.

Over time my original interest in clinical psychology increasingly drew my attention and became my primary focus.  I will receive a Masters Degree in clinical psychology from Pepperdine University in Summer 2010.

In collaboration with the California State Department of Mental Health I recently completed a longitudinal study (in review for publication) on disparate outcomes under the LPS Act.  It involved identification of a half-dozen variables across 58 counties since 1972; collection of data from obscure sources; statistical analysis of the data; and critical review of its implications for the economics of public mental health care and better utilization of public mental health care systems.

I also recently completed a study (in review for publication) on the economics of probation departments.  As with the LPS paper it is based on statistical data that was difficult to identify and access, and complicated to interpret.  It analyzes the market model for criminal behavior along the lines initially devised by Gary Becker and William Niskanen but refines it in light of public policy concerns such as pareto-optimization of scarce economic resources and the imposition of a quasi-Pigovian tax on indifferent consumers of governmental services.

B.  Research Interests

1.  Cancer Recovery and Mental Health.  I have been intimately connected with the cancer research community for over 15 years.  I actively participated in drafting portions of the UCLA Cancer Center’s core grants for three grant cycles with the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and establishing its clinical trial and research study program with Translational Oncology Research International (TORI) and its predecessors.  I am investigating specialized psychological issues affecting cancer patients, survivors and their families (as well as those of other disease and trauma, including PTSD), and their public health implications.

2.  The neurochemistry of severe mental illness (schizophrenia and other serious Axis I pathologies) and their relationship to neurological, etiological and epidemiological correlates of Axis IV issues such as homelessness.  About 3.5 million people in the lowest SES cohorts are homeless (1.35 million of them children) and 45% of homeless adults have untreated psychiatric illnesses ranging from mood disorders to acute psychoses, University Of California – San Diego (2005, February 3), “More Homeless Mentally Ill Than Expected According To UCSD Study: Interventions Urged, ScienceDaily, retrieved Nov. 15, 2009 from UCSD Web site.  These are more than just a congeries of economic circumstances.  They also have significant neurological, etiological and epidemiological implications.  While the neurochemistry of schizophrenia now is well known, that of its interaction with other diathetical Axis IV factors is less so.  The reason why I am concerned with this population is because I believe (with the philosopher John Rawls) that the measure of a just society is not the greatest good for the greatest number, but rather, how well it serves those of its members who are the least advantaged.  Continued research into these areas is the foundational step to achieve progress towards this objective.  Anomalous cases at the extreme ends of the spectrum also provide the most compelling insights into the dynamics and modalities of non-pathological mental functioning.

3.  The neurological basis of epistemic constraints.  The latter strongly imply something unusual must happen with the former, but these relationships are not well understood, e.g. Westen, D., Novotny, C. & Thompson-Brenner, H. (2004), “The Empirical Status of Empirically Supported Psychotherapies: Assumptions, Findings, and Reporting in Controlled Clinical Trials,” Psychological Bulletin, 130(4), 631-663.  I specifically am interested in several sub-issues within this category.  These include:

(a) the neurochemistry of extreme outlying pathologies such as, for example, (would be) suicide bombers; mass murderers; mothers who drown their children; dissociative fugue (DSM-IV 300.13); dissociative trance disorder (a DSM-IV axis suggested for further study); and the etiology of culture-bound syndromes (such as those defined at DSM-IV Appendix I).  These are more than just pathologies of belief.  They can be addressed empirically through research.

(b) Charles Sherrington asked, “What right have we to conjoin mental experience with physiological?” [Rede Lecture, Cambridge, 1933].  While there are thematic links between current work in clinical psychology and 20^th century philosophy of mind, from an operational standpoint there also is almost a complete disconnect between the two.  Examples include the frontier between “mind” and the brain, the nature of perception and processes of inferential reasoning.  I am interested in researching the nature, scope and extent of these discrepancies and whether the phenomena philosophy of mind purports to address can be explained neurologically.

(c) I also am interested in devising and conducting empirical, experimental research (as opposed to philosophical discussion) about how neurological processes in the brain give rise to subjective experience – the so-called “hard problem” in consciousness studies and how it is related to quantum theory, see e.g. Rosenblum, B. & Kuttner, F. (2008). Quantum Enigma – Physics Encounters Consciousness. New York, NY: Oxford U. Press; and Stapp, H. (2007). Mindful Universe – Quantum Mechanics and the Participating Observer. New York: Springer.

My most fun hobby is reading about the human potential movement of the 1960s.  While it now seems excessive and pointless, it is eerily mirrored in contemporary efforts at self-expression such as the balloon-boy’s parents; the White House gate crashers; reality television; and the phenomenology of pop culture and celebrity.