Kenneth Gergen

Gil and Frank Mustin Professor Emeritus of Psychology

Prof. Gergen is an authority on cultural change, personal identity, and language and communication. Gergen's best-known book, The Saturated Self: Dilemmas of Identity in Contemporary Life (Basic Books, 1991), examines the effects of the increasing immersion in images, information and relationships on the collective psyche of contemporary society. In one recent research project, Gergen monitored an online suicide hotline to explore the human interactions that take place in the world of "virtual" community. He is also the author of two previous books dealing with the conception of knowledge in the human sciences and society more generally. In his 25-plus years of teaching, Gergen has been awarded three Fulbright grants as well as a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Alexander von Humbolt prize in the Humanities, and honorary degrees from Tilburg University and the Saybrook Institute. Gergen maintains professional relationships with several psychological associations; most notably, he has served as president of the American Psychological Association divisions of Psychology & the Arts and Theoretical & Philosophical Psychology. Gergen earned a BA from Yale University in 1957, and a Ph.D. in psychology from Duke University in 1962.