Home - Maudsley Philosophy Group

The Maudsley Philosophy Group (MPG) provides a unique space in which understandings of mental illness are questioned, challenged and explored.

The MPG is a registered charity whose main aim is to raise public awareness of, and engagement with, fundamental questions arising in the practice of psychiatry. Launched in 2002 the MPG is rooted in the tradition of multi-disciplinary clinical and conceptual work which lay at the heart of the original Maudsley Hospital. This broad ‘Maudsley ethos’ needs to be carefully nurtured to ensure that the human person remains central to understandings of mental health and illness.

We work to fulfil this aim by inviting leading thinkers to the Maudsley to engage in expert analysis and rigorous discussion of key beliefs and concepts. The MPG has become an internationally and locally valued part of the Maudsley brand.

Precedent autonomy and shifting identity in bipolar: metaphor; justification; philosophical impact?

Dr Tania Gergel

11 December 2019

Feeding & eating disorders as disorders of embodiment and identity

Prof Giovanni Stanghellini

6 November 2019

Updating the Biopsychosocial Model

Prof Derek Bolton

9 October 2019

Conceptions of Self and Metamorphosis in Greek myth

Prof Esther Eidinow

4 April 2019

The Ethics of Powerlessness

Professor Beatrice Han-Pile

27 September 2018

Stories from my patients: dementia and the philosophy of personal identity

Dr Jules Montague

17 June 2018

The concept of truth in psychiatry

Baroness Warnock

17 April 2018

Witchcraft and Psychosis (audio)

Dr. Quinton Deeley

8 March 2018

Hubristic leadership: Understanding the causes and mitigating the effects

Dr Graham Robinson, Prof. Eugene Sadler-Smith

29 November 2017

Do societies make us sick?

Prof. Fabien Freyenhagen

17 January 2017

Hypochondria and Self-calibration

Prof. Sherrilyn Roush

1 December 2016

Moebus Syndrome & Schizophrenia

Dr. Joel Krueger

10 May 2016

The contributions of psychotherapy to mental health

Dr. Jeremy Holmes

10 February 2016

The Clinical Phenomenology of Schizophrenia

Dr John Cutting, Dr Gareth Owen

4 March 2015

Psychoanalysis, philosophy, religion: triangle of conflict or of harmony?

Prof. John Cottingham

28 January 2015

Modes of being. Fear and anxiety in Martin Heidegger’s Daseinsanalyse and their connection with anxiety disorders.

Dr. Francesca Brencio

9 October 2014

The Phenomenology of Depression

Dr Nikola Kern, Dr Gareth Owen

19 June 2014

Boundaries between Badness and Madness: A philosophical perspective

Dr Edward Harcourt

19 March 2014

Ulysses contracts – Homer’s Odyssey, fluctuating capacity and advance decision-making in psychiatry

Dr. Tania Gergel

29 January 2014

Addiction as a disorder of belief

Prof. Neil Levy

26 November 2013

Divided Brain and the Lived World

Dr. Iain McGilchrist

3 July 2013

What (if anything) can evolution tell us about the healthy mind?

Prof. John Dupré

12 June 2013

Stoicism and Cognitive Psychotherapy

Dr. John Sellars

13 March 2013

Happiness and Pleasure: what’s the difference?

Dr. Edward Skidelsky

31 October 2012

The Rise and Fall of the Biopsychosocial Model

Dr. Nassir Ghaemi

10 October 2012

Interdisciplinarity: A First Attempt at Four Broad Frameworks

Carl Gombrich

6 June 2012

Endarkenment

Robert Rowland Smith

29 February 2012

The Phenomenology and Neuropsychiatry of Dreams

Dr John Cutting

14 December 2011

Pleasure and Phenomenology of Addiction

Dr Jonathon Webber

29 November 2011

Modernism, Narcissism and Alienation

Dr Alan Ford

16 November 2011

Introduction to Michael Polanyi with suggestions about psychiatry

Dr Richard Allen

19 October 2011

Groundlessness and Neurophenomenology

Michel Bitbol

14 September 2011

The Temporality of Addiction

Dr. Ryan Kemp

15 June 2011

Autonomy: getting over the metaphysics and into the urban jungle

Prof Grant Gillett

3 February 2011

Mythic and moral psychology in Sophocles’ Antigone

Dr David McNeil

12 January 2011

Misbelief: Neuropsychological and evolutionary foundations

Dr Ryan McKay

5 May 2010

Can non-altruistic suicide ever be rational? The Kerrie Woolerton case

Professor Anthony David

17 March 2010

The transference now and then

Professor John Steiner

24 February 2010

Distinguishing Imagination and Perception

Nick Wiltsher

15 December 2009

Mental disorder and the human being as a whole: sense or non-sense?

Dr Gareth Owen

3 November 2009

Can the Brain Sciences Rescue Psychoanalysis?

Dr Andrea Mechelli

8 July 2009

What is Consciousness?

Professor Tim Crane

30 June 2009

Moral Treatment or ‘Moral’ Treatment? Psychotherapy for Borderline Personality Disorder

Associate Professor Louis Charland

3 June 2009

Ubi inletabilitas ibi virtus: some work in progress on the nature of Melancholia

Professor Wayne Martin

27 May 2009

Capacity, Practical Rationality and what a Patient Values

Dr Jill Craigie

29 March 2009

End of Life Decision Making

Baroness Mary Warnock

25 February 2009

A devil and an angel: experiences of decision-making in people with anorexia nervosa

Professor Tony Hope

29 January 2009

Science as a vehicle for myth

Professor John Gray

10 December 2008

Being well and doing well: from health to virtue and back again

Professor MM McCabe

12 November 2008

Ernst Cassirer in relation to psychopathology

Dr Norbert Andersch and Dr Edward Skidelsky

15 October 2008

Schelerian Psychopathology

Dr John Cutting

17 September 2008

Coercion in Psychiatric treatment

Professor George Szmukler

9 July 2008

Free Will and Experience

Dr Thomas Pink

21 May 2008

Phenomenology of depression

Dr Matthew Ratcliffe

16 April 2008

First-person awareness and the human condition

Professor Roger Scruton

5 March 2008

Could There Be a Science of Consciousness?

Professor David Papineau

20 February 2008

How Can We Possibly Be Free?

Professor Raymond Tallis

30 January 2008

Judgment as a Phenomeno-Logical Problem