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Iain McGilchrist

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Iain McGilchrist
McGilchrist in 2018
Born1953 (age 70–71)
NationalityBritish
Occupation(s)Psychiatrist, writer, lecturer
Known forThe Master and His Emissary, The Matter with Things

Iain McGilchrist FRSA (born 1953[1]) is a British psychiatrist,[2] literary scholar, philosopher and neuroscientist who wrote the 2009 book The Master and His Emissary, subtitled The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World.[2][3][4]

He is a Quondam fellow of All Souls College, Oxford; a former associate fellow of Green Templeton College, Oxford; an emeritus consultant at the Bethlem and Maudsley Hospital in south London, a former research fellow in Neuroimaging at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore; and a former fellow of the Institute of Advanced Studies in Stellenbosch.[5] McGilchrist is retired, though he continues to work as an independent scholar from his home on the Isle of Skye, Scotland.[6]

In 2021, McGilchrist published a new book of neuroscience, epistemology and metaphysics called The Matter with Things.[7][6][8][9]

Life and education

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A polymath,[7] McGilchrist was awarded a scholarship in the 1960s to Winchester College in the UK, soon followed by a scholarship to New College, Oxford. There he read English, winning the English Chancellor's Prize and the Charles Oldham Shakespeare Prize in 1974, and subsequently was admitted to All Souls College, Oxford in 1975 as a Prize Fellow.[6] During this time, he taught English Literature while continuing research into philosophy and psychiatry, investigating specifically the mind-body relation. After this, he decided to pursue medicine and to train as a psychiatrist.[6]

Medical career

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In his capacity as a consultant psychiatrist at the Bethlem and Maudsley Hospital, McGilchrist worked in several specialist areas including the Epilepsy Unit, the National Psychosis Referral Unit and the National Eating Disorder Unit, where he ultimately became the clinical director of their southern sector Acute Mental Health Services.[6]

Alongside his role as a physician, McGilchrist also contributed as a medical researcher. He produced original work on neuroimaging in schizophrenia and on the philosophical phenomenology of that disorder, publishing articles in the British Journal of Psychiatry, the American Journal of Psychiatry, Dialogues in Clinical Neuroscience, and the British Medical Journal.[6]

He maintained academic contributions in the humanities as well, featuring work in the Times Literary Supplement, the London Review of Books, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Literary Review, the Wall Street Journal and the Sunday Times.[6][10][11]

Since the publication of The Master and His Emissary in 2009, McGilchrist has had a growing public profile. He has taken part in radio sessions, television programmes, numerous podcasts and interviews via YouTube with notable figures such as Sam Harris, Rowan Williams and John Cleese.[12][13][14] There has been a Canadian feature film made about his second book, The Master and his Emissary, titled the Divided Brain.[15]

Books

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The Master and his Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World

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Main article: The Master and His Emissary
Superior-lateral view of the brain, showing left and right hemispheres.

McGilchrist's 2009 work, The Master and His Emissary has sold over 200,000 copies worldwide.[16] In very basic terms, it sought to consolidate research in brain lateralisation and to insist on the individual and cultural importance of the bi-hemisphere structure of the brain.

In place of the conventional view, which concluded that there were no significant differences between the hemispheres because they were both involved in everything we do, McGilchrist argues that the manner in which they operate is substantially different. It is not that the hemispheres perform different functions, but that they perform these functions in a different way. Drawing on extensive neuroscientific research from the last one-hundred years, McGilchrist argues that each hemisphere offers a unique kind of attention to the world, an attention which brings a certain version of the world into being. According to McGilchrist, we have become entranced by the version of the world brought into being by the left hemisphere and forgotten the insights produced by the right. We need both hemispheres, he concludes, but we need the left hemisphere to operate in the service of the right, we need the "emissary" left hemisphere to serve the "master" right hemisphere. The periods where the proper hemispheric balance has gone awry, McGilchrist documents in the second half of the book where he offers a history of ideas seen through the lens of the hemisphere hypothesis.

The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World

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Main article: The Matter with Things

McGilchrist's most recent work is the 2021 The Matter with Things, published by Perspectiva Press, which explores the metaphysical implications of the "hemisphere hypothesis". In this book he consolidates the latest neuroscientific evidence concerning (1) our means to truth (perception, attention, judgement, apprehension, among others); (2) the paths that we ordinarily take to truth (reason, science, logic) and other equally important paths such as intuition and imagination, and (3) the implications of this for the reality that is revealed. In the final sections, he attempts to make some headway in answering such fundamental questions as: What is space and time? What is matter and consciousness? What is value? Is a sense of the sacred baked into the world?

His main target in this book is scientific materialism: the view that the world is nothing but inert atoms, blankly colliding against one another in a predictable pattern. In place of this, McGilchrist seeks to reawaken a richer conception of reality, a conception revealed when our hemispheres return to their proper asymmetric relation.

Future work

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In addition to lecturing worldwide, McGilchrist has also been commissioned by Oxford University Press to write a book of reflections on the humanities and sciences, to offer a critique of contemporary culture from the standpoint of neuropsychiatry, and to deliver an investigation into what is revealed by the paintings of those with psychotic illnesses.[6]

Selected works

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  • McGilchrist, Iain (24 May 1982). Against Criticism. London, England: Faber and Faber. ISBN 0-571-11922-0. (Hardcover)
  • McGilchrist, I.; Cutting, J. (1995). "Somatic delusions in schizophrenia and the affective psychoses". British Journal of Psychiatry. 167 (3). Royal College of Psychiatrists: 350–361. doi:10.1192/bjp.167.3.350. PMID 7496644. S2CID 10976749. Retrieved 14 November 2011.
  • McGilchrist, Iain (June 2009). "A Problem of Symmetries". Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology. 16 (2). The Johns Hopkins University Press: 161–169. doi:10.1353/ppp.0.0236 (inactive 1 November 2024). Retrieved 6 February 2010.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of November 2024 (link) E-ISSN 1086-3303. Print ISSN 1071-6076.
  • McGilchrist, Iain (9 October 2009). The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World. USA: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-14878-7. (Hardcover)
  • McGilchrist, Iain (15 July 2012). The Divided Brain and the Search for Meaning. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-1781815335. (Kindle ebook)
  • McGilchrist, Iain (27 July 2018). Ways of Attending: How our Divided Brain Constructs the World. Abingdon-on-Thames, England: Routledge. ISBN 978-1781815335. (Paperback)
  • McGilchrist, Iain (9 November 2021). The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World. UK: Perspectiva Press. ISBN 978-1-914568-06-0. (Hardcover, 2 volumes)

See also

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References

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  1. ^ Staff (2019). "The Divided Brain". Paris Institute of Political Studies. Archived from the original on 3 March 2020. Retrieved 3 March 2020.
  2. ^ a b Kingerlee, Roger; Testa, Rita (2011). "Review of The Master and his Emissary". Neuropsychoanalysis. 12 (2). Karnac Books for the International Neuropsychoanalysis Society: 222–226.
  3. ^ Staff (14 November 2009). "Two worlds of the left and right brain (audio podcast)". BBC Radio 4 Today. Archived from the original on 28 May 2024. Retrieved 24 December 2009.
  4. ^ Grayling, A. C. (December 2009). "In Two Minds". Literary Review. Archived from the original on 4 August 2023. Retrieved 21 December 2009.
  5. ^ Staff. "Home". Iain McGilchrist. Archived from the original on 27 June 2024. Retrieved 30 June 2024.
  6. ^ a b c d e f g h Staff. "About". Iain McGilchrist. Archived from the original on 12 December 2023. Retrieved 30 June 2024.
  7. ^ a b Gaisman, Jonathan (12 February 2022). "Know your left from your right: the brain's divided hemispheres". The Spectator. Press Holdings. Archived from the original on 19 April 2022. Retrieved 13 May 2022.
  8. ^ Staff (2019). "A Day of Consciousness". The Weekend University. Archived from the original on 26 February 2020. Retrieved 26 February 2020.
  9. ^ Tallis, Raymond (April 2022). "Left-Thinking People: The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World". Literary Review. Archived from the original on 13 May 2022. Retrieved 13 May 2022.
  10. ^ McGilchrist, Iain. "Iain McGilchrist". London Review of Books. Archived from the original on 27 January 2024. Retrieved 30 June 2024.
  11. ^ "Literary Review - For People Who Devour Books". Literary Review. 30 June 2024. Archived from the original on 27 June 2022. Retrieved 30 June 2024.
  12. ^ Sam Harris (5 February 2021). The Divided Mind: A Conversation with Iain McGilchrist (Episode #234). Retrieved 30 June 2024 – via YouTube.
  13. ^ The Institute of Art and Ideas (18 December 2023). On the nature of reality | Iain McGilchrist and Rowan Williams. Retrieved 30 June 2024 – via YouTube.
  14. ^ How To Academy (6 December 2021). Are you insane?! John Cleese and Iain McGilchrist on neuroscience and creativity. Retrieved 30 June 2024 – via YouTube.
  15. ^ "The Divided Brain – The Divided Brain documentary based on the book The Master and His Emissary by Iain McGilchrist". thedividedbrain.com. Archived from the original on 27 February 2024. Retrieved 30 June 2024.
  16. ^ Staff. "Master and his Emissary". Iain McGilchrist. Archived from the original on 6 June 2024. Retrieved 30 June 2024.
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