What unexpected or serendipitous events arose in the course of your research?

Back in the 1980s, my colleagues and I in London performed a study of depressive disorder which found that not only did depression run in families but so too did 'bad luck' or unpleasant events. This seemed most surprising at the time but was soon followed by twin studies elsewhere that found much the same, and in fact, showed that for some categories of life events there is probably a genetic contribution. A recent study of twins in Wales by Anita Thapar and myself suggested 'cognitive' explanation that part of this is the way people see and report on their world. Other work, for example by my colleague Robert Plomin, suggests that some people create events and/or tend to find their way into hazardous situations. I, however, still favored a cognitive view and predicted that the most recent study by Anne Farmer would find positive correlations between siblings even for severe independent events. It did, but this was entirely explained by the same events affecting both sibs. Not the result I'd expected, but a family event. Anne is my wife.

  What role did practical support (facilities, funding, etc.) play?

I've been fortunate throughout my research career in receiving grant support from the UK Medical Research Council (MRC). Without this, most of my work, from my beginnings in full time research as a training fellow through to my present job as director of an MRC center, would have been impossible. Of course other grant-giving bodies, including the Wellcome Trust and NIH, have also been important and most recently, the UK government/Wellcome Trust Joint Infrastructure Fund has provided us the money for a new building which will bring together our Center’s offices and labs, which are currently dispersed across 7 different buildings on the Maudsley Hospital/Institute of Psychiatry campus. This will be a great boost toward achieving the Center mission of fully integrating our research on the whole range causal factors in psychiatric disorders and associated traits, from social through to molecular genetics.

  How do you see the current state of affairs in your field and its prospects for the future?

This is an exciting period in psychiatry. There is now general acceptance, as a result of family, twin, and adoption studies, that genes have an important role in most mental disorders but so too does the environment. Our work is therefore to try to understand gene- environment interplay as well as to locate and identify the genes and discover how they function. Finding genes has of course been most straightforward for rare neuropsychiatric disorders such as Huntington's disease and rare early-onset sub-forms of Alzheimer's. Some of my colleagues have become exasperated that it has been far more difficult with common complex conditions like schizophrenia, where it is now clear that there are no genes of big effect. However, I remain very optimistic that we will soon locate genes involved in these polygenic disorders and there are already replicated findings in conditions such as dyslexia and autism which, a few years ago, many clinicians hotly denied the existence of any genetic component.

  What are the implications of your work for the future of your field in terms of clinical/therapeutic applications/products?

The perception of psychiatry both within and outside the medical profession will change. In fact this is already happening. A couple of years ago, I was amused to hear a geneticist colleague remark that Alzheimer's disease should now be regarded as a neurological, not a psychiatric disease because study of its genetics and neurobiological basis was becoming tractable. If we accept that kind of radical reclassification, the same will be become true of schizophrenia, autism, bipolar disorder, unipolar depression, and so on. In terms of reducing stigma this may be beneficial. Years back, before it was a 'real' disease the relatives of an ex-US president or of a famous British writer (Iris Murdoch) might have been reluctant to discuss their Alzheimer's disease publicly. However the biggest practical long-term benefits which might arise from genetic research are the discovery of novel targets for new drugs and being able to tailor the safest, most effective treatments to individual patients.

  What would you rate as your most difficult or trying professional moment?

In my previous job as chairman of a university department of psychiatry I had repeated trying moments on the same theme over the course of 12 years. These had to do with the tension, which often became severe, between my staff's contribution to a clinical service and their ability to deliver on their research and teaching. This was compounded by the reorganisation of psychiatric service that accelerated in the 1990s, which led to greater emphasis on care in the community so that clinical academics no longer could expect their university base to be alongside their clinics.

  Which of your professional achievements brings you the most satisfaction?

In many ways I am most proud of having built a successful research led department at the College of Medicine in Cardiff despite the tensions and trying moments described above.

More specifically on my own research, I'm rather satisfied that the highly eccentric type of research that I embarked on in the mid 1970s of trying to find genes by linkage and association has now become an accepted mainstream pursuit which is likely to have big pay-offs. Along the way some of the more quantitative work on families and twins that I've done with colleagues such as Irv Gottesman, Anne Farmer, Anita Thapar, and others has contributed to understanding about the genetics of common psychiatric disorders and traits.

  Aside from your scientific career, what is your greatest or most compelling ambition in life?

1. 1. To be a better classical guitarist, but not to be too disappointed that I'll never be John Williams.
2. To be able to compete creditably at dressage at above novice level.

  Would you like to leave any other comments about your work or share a personal side of yourself?

I first decided that I wanted to become a psychiatrist at the age of about 16 after reading Freud’s Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis and thinking ‘Wow! This stuff’s cool’. I continued to regard Freud as cool when I eventually got to medical school (itself rather uncool) and then qualified as a doctor. I then spent a couple of years in internal medicine and became fascinated with the idea of discovering genetic markers for disease, writing one of my first papers on HLA and coronary heart disease. This turned out to be completely negative but I took my genetic interests with me into my psychiatric training and decided that the study of genes offered a brighter ‘Royal Road’ to discovering the cause of my patients’ troubles than analyzing their dreams. Now, quite a few years on, I would no longer even regard much of Freud’s work as science and believe that his followers did a good deal of damage to psychiatry. However he was a seductive writer and I still have a soft spot for him, but my guess is that had he been born a century later than he was, he would never have been bothered with all of that psychodynamic theory; he’d have been down the lab doing genetics.