Charles M. Johnston, MD is a psychiatrist, author, and futurist. His work challenges us to better understand and address the questions on which our human future most depends. Think of him as a “cultural psychiatrist.”

For twenty-five years, Dr. Johnston served as director of the Institute for Creative Development, a Seattle-based think tank and center for advanced leadership training. He is best know as the originator of Creative Systems Theory, a comprehensive framework for understanding purpose and change in human systems with particular pertinence to making sense of the times we live in. He speaks widely and has written ten books and numerous articles on the future and what will be required to effectively meet it.

Dr. Johnston’s writings address how the tasks ahead are requiring not just new ideas, but fundamentally new skills and capacities, in the end a kind of “growing up” as a species. Dr. Johnston proposes that while his new chapter in our human story makes significant demands, what it asks of us is ultimately straightforward, indeed common sense. What is different is that this is a maturity of common sense that we are only now beginning to grasp. In wearing his cultural psychiatrist’s hat, Dr. Johnston sees himself as an advocate for the future’s needed “new common sense.”

Other Resources by Charles Johnston

Cultural Maturity Blog: www.culturalmaturityblog.net

Looking to the Future Podcast: www.LookingtotheFuture.net

Articles on Psychology Today: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/cultural-psychiatry/feed

The Institute for Creative Development: www.creativesystems.org