Centre for Male Psychology

About Us

The Centre for Male Psychology is an independent organisation dedicated to advancing the academic discipline of male psychology and communicating findings to the wider society.

Our Purpose:   We believe that a better understanding of the psychology of males, and by extension sex/gender differences, is  necessary to find the most appropriate solutions to many of society’s challenges.

Our Vision:   To encourage the advancement of the discipline of male psychology, resulting in a better-informed psychology of males, both for the benefit of men and boys and for the greater good of the society we all share

Our Mission:  We bring this vision to life by researching male psychology; by communicating our findings through consultancy, education and training; by offering networking opportunities to help others to connect and advance their own understanding of male psychology; and by encouraging individuals to be the best they can be through self-development in line with our values.

Our Values:  We strive to make our work accessible whilst balancing the need for precision and accuracy; to be open-minded in accepting new information and ideas; to develop and foster relationships that make a positive difference; to make male psychology a scientific discipline with testable theories; to be creative in our attempts to advance male psychology and communicate it.

Use our navigation bar at the top to have a look around our website and see if there is anything we can support you with, or that you can get involved in.

History

The Centre for Male Psychology evolved from the success of the UK-based Male Psychology Network (MPN).  The seeds of this voluntary organisation were sown by a letter from consultant clinical psychologist Martin Seager, published in the BPS Psychologist magazine in December 2010. Emails and other communications, followed, culminating in a meeting between Martin Seager and psychologists John Barry and Luke Sullivan at the University of Westminster, in London in August 2011. Disillusioned with decades of failure by the NHS and other institutions to recognise specific problems facing men and boys, the group decided to take the initiative rather than wait for others to act. This resulted in the Men's Mental Health Research Team (MMHRT), which – in collaboration with others (notably clinical psychologist Roger Kingerlee) – led John Barry to initiate the wider Male Psychology Network in February 2014.

The MPN brought psychologists of various specialities together, as well as other types of therapists and people working with men’s mental health in other capacities. A common thread among MPN members was a desire for a more practical, compassionate and scientific and less ideological approach than the harsh ideological lens that men were increasingly seen through.  The Network was the first of its kind and has been successful in its own right resulting in many spin-off projects.  From June 2014 to June 2019 the MPN ran an increasingly popular annual conference at UCL, bringing together some of the biggest names in the field, sharing seminal work, and inspiring others.  The MPN also put on lectures at UCL, free to UCL staff and members of the public alike. Videos of some of these lectures can be seen here.

The MPN led in the creation of the Male Psychology Section of the BPS in 2018. The MPN has also influenced the BPS in other ways, with Seager, Barry, Kingerlee and Sullivan organising a special issue of the BPS magazine The Psychologist in 2014, and holding a symposium on male psychology at the BPS annual conference in Liverpool in 2015. Barry, Kingerlee, Seager and Sullivan also authored the first academic book on male psychology which has been one of Palgrave Macmillan’s best-selling psychology books since it’s publication in 2019, with over 50,000 book chapters downloaded in its first two years. 

The Male Psychology Network continues as one element of the wider Centre for Male Psychology, facilitating connections between people who are working in this field directly as researchers or therapists, or indirectly supporting men’s mental health in other ways.