Background
Lawrence Albert Siebert was born in Portland, Oregon, to Donald and Mildred Siebert on January 21, 1934.
Lawrence Albert Siebert was born in Portland, Oregon, to Donald and Mildred Siebert on January 21, 1934.
Raised in Portland, he graduated from Grant High School in Northeast Portland before attending Willamette University in Salem, Oregon. There he graduated from the school with a Bachelor of Arts degree in psychology. Siebert earned his master's and PhD in clinical psychology from the University of Michigan.
A native of Oregon, he was best known for his research on psychological resilience and the inner nature of highly resilient survivors. He taught at Portland State University in Portland for more than 40 years. He was an ex-army paratrooper, joining for a short time at the end of the Korean War.
As adjunct professor, he taught management psychology seminars for over forty years at Portland State University. He was the author of several books on resiliency and survivor traits. Siebert was awarded a prestigious post-doctoral fellowship by the Menninger Institute.
When he moved to Topeka to start his fellowship, he told his supervisors about his extraordinary breakthrough with understanding schizophrenia by having a "peak life" experience himself. The Menninger psychiatrists immediately declared him severely mentally ill, canceled his fellowship, and had him locked up in the back ward of a V.A. psychiatric hospital diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic. A month later he "eloped" from the V.A. hospital and returned to his home in Oregon to begin a very successful 35 year career as a teacher, author, and community leader
Siebert was a guest on radio and television interviews and call-in shows such as NPR, CNN, Oprah, and NBC's Today Show, and was featured in magazine articles in USA Today Weekend, Family Circle, Men's Fitness, Prevention Magazine, Good Housekeeping, Harvard Business Review, and Dr. Andrew Weil's Self-Healing Newsletter.
His "How Resilient Are You?" quiz has been reprinted in many publications. He was frequently quoted in newspapers articles and other mass media as an expert on issues of workspace stress and resilience. Siebert died on June 25, 2009, in Portland at the age of 75 from colon cancer.