Brent Dean Robbins, PhD (immediate past president of Division 24: Society for Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology and former president of Division 32: Society for Humanistic Psychology), has been giving public talks on living, loving, and teachingopens in new window while navigating Stage IV pancreatic cancer. For example, his recent lecture at Point Park University, “The End is the Beginning: An Existential Perspective on Suffering and Deathopens in new window,” framed dying as a field for freedom, reconciliation, and care.
Robbins is known nationally for his contributions to humanistic and existential psychology. A professor of psychology and founding director of Point Park’s APA-accredited PsyD program in Clinical Psychologyopens in new window, he has spent his career arguing that psychology should remain grounded in life, rooted in history, philosophy, and human relationships. He warned that our fields often mistake social problems for individual disorders and can hide the systemic forces behind suffering. For him, the goal of therapy is not simply to reduce symptoms but to widen a person’s possibilities for living, even within limits. He calls this a “hermeneutics of love,” a way of knowing others through care and engagement rather than detachment. Now facing terminal illness, Robbins says the ideas he has taught for decades about mortality, meaning, and love are the very tools sustaining him.
The recent talks, by turns grave and lighthearted, extend that body of work into advice on living well, facing illness, and ultimately, death. Robbins, of course, cites philosophers such as Sartre and Heidegger, but the emphasis is on how people can use the time they have to live deliberately. He cites research on meaning-centered therapy while encouraging students to nurture relationships and pursue projects that carry both personal and communal significance.
For Division 24, Robbins’ public teaching underscores the society’s mission to bring philosophical reflection into psychology in ways that speak to lived experience. His work shows how abstract ideas about freedom, mortality, and love have profound significance for how we approach our daily choices and professional practice.
