I was born in 1949 in Czechoslovakia which I left in 1971 refusing to 'live' under Stalinism and wanting to see the world.  I studied in London - Psychology at Birkbeck College and psycholinguistics at UCL; then I lived and worked in St Andrews, Edinburgh and Manchester.  I taught psychology for 27 years at Manchester University and was also heavily involved in the trade union AUT. I left the University in January 2011 as an emeritus professor of historical psychology to focus on scholarship and visual arts.  I am interested in possibilities for historical psychology as one that takes seriously the idea that people are part of the world rather than its masters. I now focus on ideas of 'people as practical historians' mapping practices through which they structure the immediacy of the world in which they live. I am using these ideas to help us understand 'insanity' and hate, especially that for outsiders.