Hey folks, welcome to the Dark Horse Podcast. I am sitting today with Matthias Desmond, who is a professor of clinical psychology at Gett University. He also holds a master's degree in statistics. Professor Desmond, welcome to Dark Horse.

Thank you, Brith. It's a pleasure to be here.

Excellent. Well, I am pretty excited about this conversation. I have been steeped in your work not for very long, but I have looked carefully at it and I have found a tremendous amount that resonates for me.

There is one element that I think I don't know that I would say that I differ with you on it, but there is a way in which when a psychological perspective and an evolutionary perspective meet, there is a lot of potential gain to be had if we can figure out how the two stories intersect, but that's not always an easy process.

I am hoping it will happen here, but I think to begin with, it would make sense. You have erupted into the public eye for your work on what is called mass formation. Some will have heard it discussed as mass formation psychosis, but I don't think that's the general term.

So what I would like is for you to describe the process of mass formation and what it has to do with certain patterns of history that everybody who watches this will already be familiar with, even if they don't realize that they are in fact patterns.

Yes, indeed, I never use the term mass formation psychosis because I think from an intellectual and the netical point of view, and even a statistical point of view, it is better to use the term mass formation, which is more neutral term, risk-igmatizing, which doesn't enter the domain of individual psychodeagnostics and so on.

Excellent, I think that's right. The one downside to it is that it does not immediately call anything to mind for most people. Psychosis obviously does, but I agree with you, psychosis is a prejudicial encounter productive.

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