The Lively Arts

John Miller - Educational Psychologist:
[on the question of whether the scary bits of Doctor Who can have a harmful effect on children] There is a tendency, I'm afraid, even amongst intelligent people, even amongst teachers, doctors, clergymen, people who should know better, to pretend all the nasty things in life come from outside. I have no doubt that a television program can have a disturbing effect on a child, but I think it's very naive to attribute this purely to the television program because an image cannot affect you per se unless it latches onto something that is already inside you. And I think what we all tend to deny in our technological society is the fact that human nature has a dark side, a hidden side, a mysterious, frightening, aspect which monsters, representations of various sorts, activate.