Psychobabble
What can you tell us about your new book Psychobabble?

I wrote the book for anyone, like myself, who is fed up with the constant pressure society puts on us to be perfect – not just on the outside but on this inside as well. It’s easy to hear the message from the self-help industry that our lives could be better as a demand that they should be better. I think that creates a huge burden of unrealistic expectation. If we seriously imagine we can become these assertive, positive-thinking, impeccably organised, well-balanced people that self-help authors imply we can be – the psychological equivalent of a size zero - we are just setting ourselves up for disappointment and a whole load of heartache. We can become so obsessed with ‘improving’ ourselves that we lose sight of the bigger picture.
I am also pretty nervous about our unquestioning attitude towards so many of the values and myths of popular psychology. Are all our problems really down to a lack of self-esteem? Does emotional intelligence really give people a cutting edge? Do men and women really live on different planets? Is it always better to let our feelings out? Psychobabble argues we should at least pause, take stock, and be prepared to examine the scientific evidence behind these cherished pseudo-scientific myths. There are some fascinating studies out there around some of these issues, and the results might surprise you!
For those who do not know what exactly is Psychobabble?

For me the term ‘psychobabble’ is just a cheeky way of referring to what happens when ideas from psychology are hijacked and carelessly injected into the wider culture without due care and attention to what they mean or respect for the limits of our current understanding. In my experience self-help books can be amongst the worst offenders. They may adopt the language, jargon and buzz words of scientific psychology – but often there’s precious little that’s scientific about them. We dress up opinion, superstition and wishful thinking as if they stem from an established understanding of what human nature is all about. Psychology is one way of trying to understand ourselves, but it’s a pretty young science and there’s an awful lot we don’t know yet.
Why do you feel that we are inundated with books and magazines to self help?
The simple answer is that there’s obviously a huge appetite for them. In some ways as our culture becomes more sophisticated we are also becoming more childlike and the self-help industry panders to that. When it boils down to it, most self-help books address some fairly basic drives: stop it hurting; give me what I want; make me more powerful. We are being taught increasingly to see life as a series of problems to be solved. And at the same time while our expectations of ourselves grow ever higher, we are also more insecure about ourselves than ever before. We therefore become easy prey for those who offer us technologies of change and transformation, promise easy answers to big questions, and who can give us back some sense of control in an increasingly complex and unpredictable world.
What do you think is the biggest seller of self help books?
In a word: fear. Fear of not being good enough. Fear of being out of control. Fear of being unhappy. All of these are perfectly valid things to want to avoid, but I think we should be asking what has gone wrong with our society that we spend so much of our life in a state of anxiety? I also question whether any of us are going to find the antidote in the various six point plans or the seven key principles offered by the latest self-help best sellers. It seems to me that we may need a more fundamental shift in our attitudes and values. Sometimes the price of ‘progress’ seems a pretty steep one to me.

Why should we pick your book above the rest?
If you’re looking for easy answers then you probably shouldn’t. But if you are a self-help addict, like so many of us, Psychobabble might just be the first step towards breaking an emotionally expensive habit. The book won’t tell you what to do, but it will hopefully make you think. The goal is to prompt you to re-evaluate some of the assumptions we make about how we ought to live, and also to assess what we really want from our lives. That all sounds rather serious, doesn’t it? Psychobabble’s actually a reasonably light-hearted book; I have tried hard to make it an entertaining read, as well as an informative one. The style is playful and provocative – so if you’re in the mood for something a little different to shift the January gloom, may I suggest you give it a try. You can read a sample on Kindle if you want.
You have appeared on several tv shows, so out of them all which has been your favourite experience?
It’s hard to choose because the main thing TV has given me has been the opportunity to work with some great teams of bright, enthusiastic, creative people – which, when you sit in a room with individual therapy clients all day (as I tend to do in my clinical work), has been a real joy. However, I think a Channel 4 series called Make Me A Grown Up, which attempted to teach social skills to a group of young adults, remains one of my personal highlights. Mind you, arbitrating between warring couples on the WifeSwap sofa had its moments as well. I have always been stunned by how much people on shows I have been involved manage to change so much in such a short time. I don’t think its anything to do with the skills of the onscreen therapist but the fact that contributors are surrounded by a whole team of people urging them on, and that they really buy into the whole premise that they are going to change. Not to mention the fact that they are on telly and everyone they know is going to see how they do!
Tell us about your background in psychology?
I actually came to psychology in quite a roundabout way, becoming interested in the subject while doing a PhD in another subject which touched on the relationship between religious belief and mental health issues. While I studied for my psychology degree I became a junior researcher on a child development unit in Cambridge, looking at the effects of postnatal depression. After my clinical doctorate I worked in the NHS before starting to do some private work. Around that time I started doing some parenting programmes for the BBC and developed a taste for a more varied working week. Now I do two days of therapy work with children and adults, a bit of expert witness work in the Child and Family Courts, and mix in some writing and media work. It’s been a great privilege to be able to take my clinical doctorate in so many different directions, but ultimately I still see myself first and foremost as a therapist.
Can people who have not been exposed to psychobabble still enjoy and benefit from this book?

Well the point is that we have all been exposed to psychobabble, whether we realise it or not. The reason I wrote the book is partly because these ideas are so commonplace, so much part of our everyday framework of assumptions, that we don’t even notice them any more. So this really is a book for everyone because it’s about what is going on in our culture right now, and that affects all of us.
What is the most common issue you deal with in your patients?
Like many therapists I see a lot of Depression and Anxiety, but every individual is different and so the way people respond, even to the same illness, can be different too. I do quite a bit of trauma work as well which can be fascinating. I never fail to be amazed at the resilience of some people to endure the most terrible events and still find a way to remain psychologically intact.
What is next for you?
Who knows? I can hardly write any more self-help books for a while! I am in discussions with a TV company about a live programme scheduled for March but haven’t heard anything definite yet. In the meantime I am going to try and take my own advice and make sure that I don’t get so busy I don’t have enough time to enjoy the simple pleasures of life: walking my dog in the local forest, spending time with my family, and sticking with my yoga class until I can at least touch my toes…
Female First Lucy Walton