David Kantor

David Kantor, (b. 1927) is an American systems psychologist, organizational consultant, and clinical researcher. He is the founder of three research and training institutes, the author of numerous books and articles, and the inventor of a series of psychometric instruments that provide insight into individual and group behaviors. His groundbreaking empirical research revealed a fundamental structure to all communication, known as Structural Dynamics, which provides the solution to the most common communication challenges experienced in any human system. Kantor’s Four Player Model has been referenced by hundreds of other theorists including Peter Senge in The Fifth Discipline, Bill Isaacs in Dialogue: The Art of Thinking Together, and Michael Jensen and Werner Erhard in their revolutionary leadership program: Being a Leader and the Effective Exercise of Leadership as Your Natural Self Expression. His work has made a significant contribution to both family systems therapy and organizational theory and practice.

He has taught and trained thousands of students at institutions including Harvard University, Harvard Medical School, Tufts University School of Medicine, Northeastern University, the Boston Family Institute, the Family Institute of Cambridge, the Kantor Family Institute, and has also been the recipient of multiple grants from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). He is the Founder and Thought Leader of The Kantor Institute.

David Kantor received his B.A. and M.A. from Brooklyn College in 1950 and 1952, respectively, and received his Ph.D. from Brandeis University in 1963.

Beginning in 1956, he was a Lecturer at Harvard University’s Department of Social Relations. Kantor's innovative research methods while at Harvard included a study of the effects on career choice of students at Phillips Brook house volunteering in mental hospitals; the effects of student volunteers on the culture and behavior of psychiatric patients; and a study of an alternative treatment modality (a virtual family). The third study, creating halfway houses where students lived with and studied patients full-time, and placing healthy students in mental hospitals (disguised as patients) to directly study treatment of patients and the condition of mental hospitals, was captured by Robert Kaiser on the National Educational Television Network - WTTW His work on the negative effects of institutionalizing patients was instrumental in the movement to shift psychological and psychiatric care toward more effective and beneficial treatment methods where appropriate.

...
Wikipedia