PROFILE

Simon McCarthy-Jones, Ph.D., is an associate professor in clinical psychology and neuropsychology at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland. He has previously worked at Macquarie University (Sydney, Australia) and Durham University (Durham, U.K.).

His research focuses on three topics: auditory verbal hallucinations (“hearing voices”), child sexual abuse, and the right to freedom of thought.

He is interested in all aspects of the experience of hearing voices that others cannot hear. This ranges from the history of the experience (from Babylon, to the birth of psychiatry, to the rise of the Hearing Voices Movement), the science of the experience (neuroimaging, genetics, cognition, trauma), the meaning of the experience, and how to assist people who are distressed by it. His most recent book on this topic is Can’t You Hear Them? The Science and Significance of Hearing Voices.

In the area of child sexual abuse, he focuses on its potential physical and mental health consequences and the role shame plays in abuse.

On the right to freedom of thought, he is interested in the challenges posed by new technology and how behavioral science insights can be used to support, not undermine, such freedom.