Jose Juan Dergan was born in Lima, the Capital of Peru on November 2, 1952. He spent the first years of his childhood in Chiclayo, a coastal city, in northern Peru. At the age of 8, his parents moved to Lima, where he would reside through the next 16 years. He graduated in 1978 from the Department of Psychology at University Inca Garcilazo de la Vega, shortly after this, he migrated to Miami, United States.
In 1983, he attained his master’s diploma in psychology and, in 1987 his doctoral degree, both at the Miami Institute of Psychology (Albizu University).
Since his early training as a student, Dergan showed special interest in both the area of neuropsychology and clinical psychology, In fact, through the years of clinical practice, he developed empirical methods to fusion neuropsychological foundations to the field of psychotherapy and general clinical psychology. During the years of doctoral training, Dergan was encouraged by Professor Ruben Ardila, a famous scholar in the field of experimental psychology, to write an article introducing the Luria-Nebraska Neuropsychological battery to the Spanish-speaking scientific community. This scientific paper was published by the Journal of Advances in Clinical Psychology (Bogota, 1984).
After his doctoral graduation, Dergan became involved in the field of substance abuse which subsequently allowed him to apply neuropsychological findings to clinical treatment of Addiction. By that time, He also became involved in teaching such principles at the Institute for Addiction at the University of Miami. In 1990, Dr Dergan was appointed as a director of psychology at West Gables Hospital, a rehabilitation facility. A year later, he also became the director of the Pain Unit and a consultant to the head injury program. Concomitantly, Dergan opened up his own clinical office in where he has worked for the last 34 years.
Through his years of experience with a variety of multiethnic populations, Dr Dergan has developed neurocognitive protocols for the treatment of schizophrenia and the elderly population. In fact, in his first book titled Neuropsicologia de la esquizofrenia (neuropsychology of Schizophrenia) Bogota 2007) he posits the merging of the principles of the Lurian school of thought to the field of schizophrenia opening a new window for future research on this area. As a co-author, Dergan published a paper on the principles of cultural-historical neuropsychology in a book titled Lev Vigostki in the 21st Century(New York).
Recently. He has also published a new book titled Analisis Neuropsicologico del Funcionamiento Cerebral en el Adulto Mayor (Neuropsychological Analysis of the Cerebral Functions in the elderly population (Bogota, 2024).
Dergan has also entered a fictional world with the publishing of his novel Bajo las Garras del Condor (under the condor’s claws) (Buenos Aires,2014). In this fictional depiction of historical characters from the political turbulence of the seventies, Dergan fusions his psychological and philosophical views of the contemporary human being with real events distorted by his imagination.