I’m a social psychologist and writer. While completing my undergraduate and then PhD in psychology, I undertook a sub-major in television and film. All of that took about ten years. I guess it did take nearly that long to sell all the copies of the initial print run of Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams. But he is also the Father of Psychoanalysis. I spent much of my University time at (in equal measure) the campus tavern and the library, but I don’t recall fathering anything.

During all of this, I wrote several articles that appeared in various places on the web (Yes, Virginia, there was a Geocities… and there was a lot of WordArt). I also took the chance whenever I could to interview actors and singers and writers who were incredibly kind to me and generous with their time. Although some of these interviews did make their way to various places, I never collected them in one space. For a handful of others conducted at the same time I was working on a couple of big study and work projects, unfortunately they stayed securely on my computer (they will see the light of day soon).

In 2013, I realised how much I missed having an outlet to research and speak with people whose work I admired, and so, in December of that year, I started this blog. I also decided that I wanted to express myself in other ways and write on issues that interest me and, I hope, you. Given my background and current work as a researcher this naturally involves social psychology. My actual job – the thing that puts gin on the table, but also ensures that much glassware is broken – involves examining how we take another person’s point of view. This is often called perspective taking or empathy. A very well-read and dear pal of mine (an actress I hope will be featured on this blog at a later time) took a cursory scan of a recent paper of mine and summed up my research area as, “Looks like an in depth deconstruction of getting along. Never enough of that sort of thing going around.” Couldn’t have said it better myself, really.

Welcome.