andyWeb1_2Andy is a Trustee for the Richard Dawkins Foundation and a psychiatrist in Charlottesville, Virginia. He received his B.A. from Duke University and his M.D. from the University of Virginia, where he later served as the Assistant Director of the Center for the Study of Mind and Human Interaction, which involved interdisciplinary intervention and research into large-group ethnic and political conflict. He continues his work at the University to this day as a Student Health staff psychiatrist for Counseling and Psychological Services, as well as for the Institute of Law, Psychiatry, and Public Policy. Since 1992, he and Marilyn Minrath, Ph.D. have also conducted a private forensic psychiatry practice, offering individual psychoanalytic psychotherapy and medication consultation. Their cases have encompassed a full range of legal issues including child custody, capital murder, competence, and mental state at the time of offense. For more information, you can visit their website.

Dr. Thomson has generated numerous publications in forensic psychiatry and on several personality disorders, including psychobiographical essays on Robert E. Lee and Lee Harvey Oswald. His current research interest is in using the principles of Evolutionary Psychology to understand depression, suicide terrorism, racism, and religion.