Jordan Peterson

Jordan Bernt Peterson (born 12 June 1962) is a Canadian psychologist, author, and media commentator.

Peterson was born on 12 June 1962 in Edmonton, Alberta, and grew up in Fairview, a small town in the northwest of the province.

He was the eldest of three children born to Walter and Beverley Peterson.

Beverley was a librarian at the Fairview campus of Grande Prairie Regional College, and Walter was a school teacher.

His middle name is Bernt, after his Norwegian great-grandfather.

Peterson grew up in a mildly Christian household.

In junior high school, Peterson became friends with Rachel Notley and her family.

After graduating from Fairview High School in 1979, Peterson entered Grande Prairie Regional College to study political science and English literature, studying to be a corporate lawyer.

During this time he read The Road to Wigan Pier by George Orwell, which significantly affected his educational focus and worldview.

He later transferred to the University of Alberta, where he completed his BA in political science in 1982.

Afterwards, he took a year off to visit Europe, where he began studying the psychological origins of the Cold War; 20th-century European totalitarianism; and the works of Carl Jung, Friedrich Nietzsche, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and Fyodor Dostoevsky.

Peterson then returned to the University of Alberta and received a BA in psychology in 1984.

In 1985, he moved to Montreal to attend McGill University where he earned his PhD in clinical psychology under the supervision of Robert O. Pihl in 1991, and remained as a post-doctoral fellow at McGill's Douglas Hospital until June 1993, working with Pihl and Maurice Dongier.

While at McGill University and the Douglas Hospital, Peterson conducted research into familial alcoholism and its associated psychopathologies, such as childhood and adolescent aggression and hyperactive behaviour.

From July 1993 to June 1998, Peterson lived in Arlington, Massachusetts, while teaching and conducting research at Harvard University, where he was hired as an assistant professor in the psychology department, later becoming an associate professor.

During his time at Harvard, he studied aggression arising from drug and alcohol abuse.

An article in The Harvard Crimson said he possessed a "willingness to take on any research project, no matter how unconventional".

Author Gregg Hurwitz, a former student of Peterson's at Harvard, has cited Peterson as an inspiration of his, and psychologist Shelley Carson, former PhD student and now-professor at Harvard, recalled that Peterson's lectures had "something akin to a cult following", stating, "I remember students crying on the last day of class because they wouldn't get to hear him anymore."

After researching and teaching at Harvard University, he returned to Canada in 1998 and became a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto.

Following his associate position at Harvard, Peterson returned to Canada in 1998 to become a full professor at the University of Toronto.

Peterson's areas of study and research within the fields of psychology are psychopharmacology, abnormal, neuro, clinical, personality, social, industrial and organizational, religious, ideological, political, and creativity.

Peterson has authored or co-authored more than a hundred academic papers and was cited more than 18,000 times as of 2022.

In 1999, he published his first book, Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief, which became the basis for many of his subsequent lectures.

The book combined psychology, mythology, religion, literature, philosophy and neuroscience to analyze systems of belief and meaning.

Often described as conservative, he began to receive widespread attention in the late 2010s for his views on cultural and political issues.

Peterson has described himself as a classic British liberal and a traditionalist.

Peterson was born and raised in Alberta, and he obtained two bachelor's degrees in political science and psychology from the University of Alberta and a PhD in clinical psychology from McGill University.

In 2016, Peterson released a series of YouTube videos criticizing the Act to amend the Canadian Human Rights Act and the Criminal Code (Bill C-16), passed by the Parliament of Canada to introduce "gender identity and expression" as prohibited grounds for discrimination.

Peterson said that the bill would make the use of certain gender pronouns compelled speech and related this argument to a general critique of political correctness and identity politics.

He received significant media coverage, attracting both support and criticism.

Notley became leader of the Alberta New Democratic Party and the 17th premier of Alberta.

Peterson was a member of the New Democratic Party (NDP) from ages 13 to 18.

As a teenager, Peterson decided that "religion was for the ignorant, weak and superstitious" and hoped for a left-wing revolution, a hope that lasted until he met left-wing activists in college.

As a young man, Peterson became obsessed with the Cold War and the possibility of a nuclear apocalypse.

In 2018, he paused both his clinical practice and teaching duties and published his second book: 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, a self-help book.

Promoted with a world tour, it became a bestseller in several countries.

Throughout 2019 and 2020, Peterson suffered health problems in the aftermath of severe benzodiazepine withdrawal syndrome.

In 2021, he published his third book, Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life, resigned from the University of Toronto, and returned to podcasting.

In 2022, Peterson signed a content distribution deal with the conservative media company The Daily Wire and became Chancellor of Ralston College.

His various lectures and conversations, available mainly on YouTube and podcasts, have gathered millions of views.