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• Doris McIlwain

I'm a personality psychologist. I study emotion, memory and movement.  My research areas span individual differences that make a difference to the way that we negotiate life tasks, and to the way the we experience others and ourselves.  In my movement research I am exploring the way that verbal instructions permit us to colonise the body in different ways; in this work I explore yoga practitioners from two traditions and explore novices and experts in their differing approaches to effort and skill. I am currently looking at the difference between rumination and reflection in accessing the personal past, with an interest in how depression and avoidant attachment might also play a role in making us live life more palely.

I also research the links between Narcissism and such personality styles as Machiavellianism and psychopathy, with an emphasis on psychological mindedness; specifically the way that openness to vicarious feelings shapes morality. I am interested in and am currently writing about the way that psychopathically inclined people live strangely in time.  An enduring interest is in self-deception and the different forms that takes from the way that we sculpt an image of ourselves to present to others, right down to a motivated lack of insight into the beliefs we hold and the wellsprings of our own actions.  My enduring project is exploring the nature of Charisma and I have a book on that topic which came out in December, 2009.

I teach an array of courses at Macquarie University: contributing a guest lecture to PSY 234, a second year course which addresses personality and social psychology.  I run two third year courses relevant to personality: PSY 336 - a Third year personality course, and a course on the Philosophy of Psychoanalysis (PSY 353)   I was part of the Sydney Silvan Tomkins Research Group into Tomkin's Affect Theory, and retain a keen interest in his work.  I am a foundational member of the Working Through Psychoanalysis group.
 
 

Watch this space.  I'm in the process of updating my webpage...ever...