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Dr Doris McIlwain

Department of Psychology
Macquarie University
NSW 2109
Australia

Phone: 9850 9430
Email: dmcilwai@psy.mq.edu.au


Last updated February 2

2010

Keep the dream running.

 

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.
 
 

Research Teaching Outreach Wider interests

 Recent Publications

 

Collaborations:

with Anthony Arcuri

Semester One 2009

PSY 234
 

Check this out!
Harmful Social Science
 

PSY 361 Philosophy of Psychoanalysis


Article June 30, 2009 written by Fiona Smith on Charm

Historical outreach:


     Peer talk:  talk

   ABC Radio Program
 

 Radio program March 6: repression
 

   Psychoanalysis and Culture

 
  Traces of Shame - Details of POPIG talk

Watch the video on www.psychevisual.com

June 30, 2009

Thanks for all your great questions. I attach the short reading list as promised.

 

 Recent Reviews

 

Charisma

 Yoga & Psychology

 The Science of Love


Semester Two 2009

PSY 305 Personality


 

 


 
 
 

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