Skip to main content
School of Society and Environment - Department of History
  1. School of Society and Environment - Department of History
  2. Study
  3. PhD
  4. Current PhD Students
  5. Profiles

Chris Maloney

Chris Maloney

Email: c.maloney@qmul.ac.uk

PhD project

‘The Life and Afterlife of William Sargant: Physicalism, Controversy, and Change in Twentieth-Century Psychiatry’

This uses Sargant’s career and posthumous reputation to examine physical treatments, psychiatric authority, consent, the sense of self, and the mind–body question in twentieth-century Britain. The project is particularly concerned with Sargant’s writings on “mind control”, conditioning, conversion, possession, magic, and religion, and with his later construction as a cultural “folk devil” — an emblem of psychiatric coercion, cruelty, and reductionism.

Supervisors
Rhodri Hayward, Department of History, QMUL

Research Interests

Chris's publications include work on psychiatric history, psychodynamic psychotherapy, welfare, and asylum and mental health. Across these fields, he has returned to questions of medical metaphor, professional authority, and the cultures of psychiatric theory. Recent work includes an article in History of Psychiatry on narrative determinism and the representation of Sargant in Jon Stock’s The Sleep Room.

Academic Background

Before beginning doctoral research, Chris was an NHS psychiatrist and Consultant Medical Psychotherapist, and later a GP Partner in Hackney. In medico-legal practice, he worked with people seeking asylum, assessing physical and psychological trauma and documenting torture.

Selected Publications

  • Maloney, C., ‘A Story That Had to Be Told: Narrative Determinism and “The Sleep Room”’, History of Psychiatry, 37.1 (2026), 94–98, https://doi.org/10.1177/0957154X251357747
  • Maloney, C., ‘Nazi Eugenics: A Thought Experiment and The Sanity Inspectors’, HOPSIG News and Notes: Newsletter of the Royal College of Psychiatrists’ History of Psychiatry Special Interest Group, 16 (Spring 2023), 32–37
  • Maloney, C., ‘Afterword: Being Disagreeable’, in Deich, F., The Sanity Inspectors (Norwich: Boiler House Press, 2023), pp. 277–298
  • Maloney, C., Nelki, J., and Summers, A., eds, Seeking Asylum and Mental Health: A Practical Guide for Professionals (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022)
  • Ballatt, J., Campling, P., and Maloney, C., Intelligent Kindness: Rehabilitating the Welfare State, 2nd edn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020)

Conference Presentations

Maloney, C., ‘Unquiet Minds: Sargant to Jamison – When Paternalism Had Its Day’, History of Psychiatry SIG Spring Conference: Paradigms of the Past, Royal College of Psychiatrists, online, 20 May 2026.

Back to top