Laurence A. Rickels moved to the West Coast in 1981 after completing graduate training in German philology at Princeton University. While in California he earned a psychotherapy license. He has published numerous studies of the phenomenon he calls "unmourning," a term that inspired his trilogy Aberrations of Mourning, The Case of California, and Nazi Psychoanalysis. He has also written the coursebooks The Vampire Lectures and The Devil Notebooks. All of these books have been published by the University of Minnesota Press.