Iain McGilchrist | |
|---|---|
 McGilchrist in 2018 | |
| Born | 1953 (age 71–72) |
| Occupation(s) | Psychiatrist, writer, lecturer |
| Known for | The Master and His Emissary,The Matter with Things |
Iain McGilchristFRSA (born 1953[1]) is a Britishpsychiatrist,[2]philosopher andneuroscientist who wrote the 2009 bookThe Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World.[2][3][4]
He is a Quondam fellow ofAll Souls College, Oxford; a former associate fellow ofGreen Templeton College, Oxford; an emeritus consultant at theMaudsley andBethlem Royal hospitals in south London, a former research fellow in Neuroimaging atJohns Hopkins University in Baltimore; and a former fellow of the Institute of Advanced Studies inStellenbosch.[5]
In 2021, McGilchrist published a book ofneuroscience,epistemology andmetaphysics calledThe Matter with Things.[6][7][8][9]
McGilchrist was awarded a scholarship in the 1960s toWinchester College in the UK, followed by a scholarship toNew College, Oxford.[6] He read English there, and won the English Chancellor's Prize and the Charles Oldham Shakespeare Prize in 1974. He was then admitted toAll Souls College, Oxford in 1975 as a Prize Fellow.[7] During this time, he taughtEnglish Literature and researchedphilosophy andpsychiatry, specifically investigating themind-body relation. After this, he decided to pursuemedicine and to train as a psychiatrist.[7]
As a consulting psychiatrist at theMaudsley andBethlem Royal hospitals, McGilchrist worked in the Epilepsy Unit, the National Psychosis Referral Unit and the National Eating Disorder Unit. He ultimately became the clinical director of their southern sector Acute Mental Health Services.[7]
McGilchrist also contributed as amedical researcher. He produced work onneuroimaging inschizophrenia and on thephilosophical phenomenology of that disorder, and published articles in theBritish Journal of Psychiatry, theAmerican Journal of Psychiatry,Dialogues in Clinical Neuroscience, and theBritish Medical Journal.[7]
He maintained academic contributions in thehumanities, featuring work inthe Times Literary Supplement, theLondon Review of Books, theLos Angeles Review of Books,Literary Review, theWall Street Journal and theSunday Times.[7][10][11]
In October 2025, McGilchrist was appointed Chancellor ofRalston College to succeedJordan Peterson.[12]
McGilchrist's 2009 work,The Master and His Emissary sold over 200,000 copies.[13] The book seeks to consolidate research inbrain lateralisation. A major claim and focus of the book is the individual and cultural importance of the bi-hemisphere structure of the brain.
McGilchrist argues that the manner in which the two hemispheres 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 neuroscientific research from the last one hundred years, McGilchrist argues that each hemisphere offers a unique kind ofattention 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.
Following the publication ofThe Master and His Emissary, McGilchrist took part in radio sessions, television programmes, numerouspodcasts and interviews via YouTube with figures such asSam Harris,Rowan Williams andJohn Cleese.[14][15][16] There has been a Canadianfeature film made about his second book,The Master and his Emissary, titledthe Divided Brain.[17]
McGilchrist's 2021The Matter with Things book, published by Perspectiva Press, explores themetaphysical 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 asintuition andimagination, 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 ismatter andconsciousness? What is value? Is a sense of thesacred baked into the world?
His main target in this book isscientific 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.[citation needed]
McGilchrist has been commissioned byOxford University Press to write a book of reflections on thehumanities and sciences, to offer a critique ofcontemporary culture from the standpoint ofneuropsychiatry, and to deliver an investigation into what is revealed by the paintings of those withpsychotic illnesses.[7]
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