Academy of Social Sciences in Australia

Academy Fellows

Year elected: 2005
Panel: D
Discipline: Psychology

Professor Malcolm Macmillan

Honorary Principal Fellow
School of Psychology
University of Melbourne

Macmillan, Malcolm. BSc (UWA), MSc (Melbourne), DSc (Monash). Fellow (1988) and Life Member (2005) Australian Psychological Society, Fellow (1991) American Psychological Society

Malcolm Macmillan is a Visiting Professor in the School of Psychology at Deakin university and was previously a Senior Lecturer in Psychology at Monash University. At Deakin he supervises the research of Honours students and students in the Post-graduate Professional Program, being especially interested in the differentiation of ordinary 'down' moods from clinical depression. Much of his own research has been on the history of the doctrine of localisation, and of the history of the neurosciences more generally, and in historically based critical evaluations of psychoanalysis. He is currently working on the early history of the neurosciences in Australia. His book "Freud Evaluated: The Completed Arc" has had some critical success and his "An Odd Kind of Fame: Stories of Phineas Gage" has wone two international awards. A number of his works on psychoanalysis have been translated into French and Polish.

In 1963-64 he was a member of the committee that drew up the constitution of the Australian Psychological Society and was a member of its first Council. he was a founding member of the ASP's Division (later Board) of clinical psychologists, served on various of its accreditation committees during 1974-1988, and was its President during 1984-85. He was President of the International Society for the History of the Neurosciences in 2004-2005 and Co-Chairman of its Local Arrangements Committee for the 2005 Annual Meeting of the Society held at the University of St Andrews, Scotland.

Key publications

  • Macmillan, M (2005) Localisation and William Macewen's early brain surgery. Part II: The cases, Journal of the History of the Neurosciences, 14, 24-56.
  • Macmillan, M (2004) Inhibition and Phineas Gage: repression and Sigmund Freud, Neuro-Psychoanalysis, 6, 183-194.
  • Macmillan, M (2004) Localisation and William Macewen's early brain surgery. Part I: The controversy, Journal of the History of the Neurosciences, 13, 297-325.


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