Trinity’s oldest PhD graduate (84) tackles Harry Potter’s popularity with adults

Mary Jerram Pyle describes herself as a “lateish developer”, which is one way of describing somebody who has earned a doctorate at the age of 84.

Her PhD, entitled Harry Potter and the Unconscious Dimension, makes her the oldest PhD graduate in the long annals of Trinity College Dublin, which was founded in 1592. Her family have been attending the university since the 18th century.

She received her doctorate at a ceremony in Trinity on Friday afternoon.

Mrs Pyle, the widow of former Irish Times editor Fergus Pyle who died in 1997, began her PhD in 2014 and would have finished it earlier but for the pandemic. She has other commitments as a founder member of the Irish Forum for Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy and the teaching of psychoanalytic therapy in Trinity. “That took up a lot of time,” she said.

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“I won’t say that age is just a number because I don’t think it is. I still want to go on learning things. In many ways. I took up playing the cello at 60. I like learning and discovering things.

“I don’t think being older, if you are interested in doing stuff, is a reason not to do things. Learning the cello and doing the PhD brought me into contact with young people who are at the same stage as me.”

She had a long and distinguished career as a psychoanalyst before embarking on her PhD. Her doctorate is based on an interesting premise: why are the Harry Potter books, which are written for children, so popular with adults?

As a psychoanalysis and Harry Potter fan, she believes she has some insight into that question. “I had always wanted to get stuck into a piece of academic work, but there wasn’t much time when I was working,” she explained.

“Once my family had grown up, there was more time to do it. I’m more relieved than proud. Nobody has done this before. It’s a completely new piece of work. I’m proud to be part of the Trinity lore, so to speak.”

She came up with the theme for her PhD when she bought the Harry Potter books for her grandchildren and started reading them herself. She then passed on the books to her partner, Christopher Moriarty, a marine biologist, who also enjoyed them.

“Coming from the psychoanalytic point of view, there had to be an unconscious reason. For one thing it deals with a lot of the issues that people have growing up,” she said.

“The very few people who have written psychoanalytic papers about it are agreed on that one. Somehow, it gets into very deep issues which start in childhood but can come back again at any stage in life.”

Mrs Pyle has four children, the oldest is 58, and three grandchildren.

She is hoping to publish her book as a non-academic publication and a well-known publisher has expressed an interest in it.