J.R. Millenson received his Ph.D. from Columbia University in psychology, a subject that he taught at Carnegie Mellon, Oxford and McGill Universities. He is a Member of the Register of Herbalists (MRH) in Great Britain, and founder of the Findhorn Bay Apothecary, a natural health center in Scotland. He is currently a tutor for the School of Herbal Medicine of the General Council and Register of Consultant Herbalists in Brighton, Sussex. Among Dr. Millenson's other publications is Principles of Behavioral Analysis, a widely used psychology textbook.

His book Mind Matters: Psychological Medicine in Holistic Practice is a textbook of mind-body medicine written for students and practitioners of alternative medicine. It brings together in one coherent volume practical techniques in psychological medicine-what Plato called "healing with words"-for those wishing to work more deeply with the emotional and mental aspects of illness.

Mind Matters balances a scientific approach towards health psychology with humanistic conceptions of medicine as an art. It presents a rigorous exposition of the theory and practice of health psychology from the standpoint of natural medicine, one in which the causes of illness are set in the wide-angled lens of a multicausal, biopsychosocial orientation.