Richard N. Williams – Founder/President
Richard N. Williams received his Ph.D. in Psychological Sciences from Purdue University. He is a professor in the department of Psychology at BYU and has also served on the faculty in the Department of Counseling Psychology and Special Education at Brigham Young University. He was the founding Director of the Wheatley Institution at BYU. His scholarly interests include the philosophical, conceptual, and moral foundations of psychological theories and the relationship between traditional and postmodern perspectives. Related to this family of topics, he has written What=s Behind the Research: Discovering Hidden Assumptions in the Social Sciences (with Brent Slife), Sage Press, 1995, and edited (with Edwin Gantt) On Hijacking Science: Exploring the nature and consequences of overreach in Psychology,(Routledge, 2018), and Psychology for the Other, Duquesne University Press, 2002, and, with Daniel N. Robinson, Scientism: The New Orthodoxy (Bloomsbury, U. K., 2015). He has published in various scholarly journals, recently, with Edwin Gantt, Williams, R. N., & Gantt, E.E. (2025). Theory as Truth and as Ethics, Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology, 45(3), 195-210, “Methodological Naturalism, Saturation, and Psychology’s Failure to Save the Phenomena” (Journal for the Theory of Social Behavior, 2020), and “Truth in a Post-Truth World: Transcendence and the Essence of Meaning” (Journal of Constructivist Psychology, In Press.)
Edwin E. Gantt – Director
Edwin E. Gantt is currently Professor of Psychology at Brigham Young University where he teaches courses on the History of Psychology, Personality Theory, Philosophy of Social Science, Qualitative Research Methods, and the Restored Gospel and Psychology. A native of Idaho Falls, Idaho, he served a two-year mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Japan. He received a Doctoral Degree in Clinical Psychology from Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1998, with a focus on Existential-Phenomenological psychology and qualitative research methods. He has authored and co-authored over 80 scholarly articles and book chapters. His research revolves primarily around the questions of moral agency, psychological explanation, and the relationship between religion, science, and psychology. In particular, he is interested in countering naturalistic and deterministic theories in contemporary psychology to help sustain an intellectual space where human agency, meaning, and morality can be taken seriously in our study of the whole person. He is co-author (with Richard N. Williams) of the books Psychology-for-the-Other: Levinas, Ethics, and the Practice of Psychotherapy and Hijacking Science: Exploring the Nature and Consequences of Overreach in Psychology, as well as former editor of the textbook series Taking Sides: Clashing Views on Psychological Issues. He is an Associate Editor for the Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology. He and his wife Anita are the proud parents of four sons, three daughters-in-law, and the indulgent grandparents of three rambunctious, beautiful grandsons.
Lane Fischer – Director
Lane Fischer, Ph.D. is a licensed psychologist who has served as the president of the Association of Mormon Counselors and Psychotherapists (AMCAP, now labeled ALDSCAP), the editor of the journal Issues in Religion and Psychotherapy, and co-editor of the two volumes of Turning Freud Upside Down: Gospel Perspectives on Psychotherapy’s Fundamental Problems.