Exeter, NH (May 5, 2009)—Phillips Exeter Academy will host a lecture and discussion with psychiatrist and Harvard Medical School professor, Dr. George Eman Vaillant, a 1951 graduate of PEA and honorary member of the class of 1959. Dr. Vaillant is research director of psychiatry at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, MA. He will speak on a variety of topics, including his recently published work, Spiritual Evolution – How we are Wired for Faith, Hope, and Love, on Monday, May 11, 7:00 p.m., in the Assembly Hall, located on the second floor of the PEA Academy Building on Front Street. The event is free and open to the public.

Vaillant has spent his research career charting adult development and the recovery process of schizophrenia, heroin addiction, alcoholism, and personality disorder. He has spent the last 30 years as director of the study of adult development at the Harvard University Health Service. The study has prospectively charted the lives of more than 800 men and women, for over 60 years.

A graduate of Phillips Exeter Academy, Harvard College and Harvard Medical School, Vaillant completed his psychoanalytic training at the Boston Psychoanalytic Institute. He is a Fellow at the Center for the Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, the American College of Psychiatrists, and has been an invited speaker and consultant for seminars and workshops throughout the world. Vaillant’s previous major focus centered on developing a way to study defense mechanisms empirically; more recently, he has been studying successful aging.

Vaillant is a recent research prize recipient of the International Psychogeriatric Society; as well as the Foundations Fund Prize for Research in Psychiatry from the American Psychiatric Association, the Strecker Award from The Pennsylvania Hospital, the Burlingame Award from The Institute for Living, and the Jellinek Award for research in alcoholism. He is the author of several books, among them: Adaptation to Life, Natural History of Alcoholism, The Wisdom of the Ego, and Aging Well.

This event is hosted by the Academy’s Schleyer Family Fund. For further information, contact Kathleen Brownback at kbrownback@exeter.edu or 603-777-4331, or visit the Academy’s website at http://www.exeter.edu/. You may also call the PEA public events line at 603-777-4309. Directions to the Academy are available at 603-777-4330.