ASPECTS OF IDIOGRAPHIC PSYCHOLOGY
My interest in left- and right-handers already concerns group differences and so is idiographic. It originated in neurology, and my belief that there is often a psychiatric overlay to neurological problems led me to write a book called Environment and Mental Health. This argued that there is a mistaken cognitive bias towards attributing mental disturbance to biological factors, so neglecting possibly much more significant factors to do with the environment. Thus the urban/rural distinction is relevant to mental disturbance and this distinction was the focus of an article in Journal of Environmental Management 31, which studied a sample of schoolchildren in Northern Ireland. A major group difference in Northern Ireland, which rather baffles mainlanders, is that between Protestant and Catholic, and this was the focus of my articles in International Journal of Group Tensions 20 and Studies in Education 6. Lastly, my interest in mental disturbance also led me to work on “conceptual systems” which was the topic of my note in Personality and Individual Differences 6.