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![]() The School Of Life CrewThe School Of Life |
Almost inevitably, somewhere along the path of our friendships, we are fated to stumble upon one of the most paradoxical yet universal of characters: ...
Once upon a time, this was Joseph-Désiré Mobutu’s favourite of the three pools in his $100 million, 15,000 square-metre palace, on top of a hill...
Our thoughts are – nominally – free to go in any direction at any time of day or night. In practice, perhaps far more than we dare to admit, they...
For many of us, a fundamental priority is that we should never, ever end up in a psychiatric hospital — what used to be called an asylum (or, as...
Our refusal to forgive ourselves for our mistakes tends to hang on a strong sense of how much these were, in the end, avoidable. We obsessively go...
There is a paradox at the heart of what it means to be a loving person. On the one hand, the aspiration would seem to necessitate that we be as...
If we were ever tempted to despair about the human capacity for love, we might recover hope by considering James Gowan’s relationship with Little...
Pieter Saenredam was a 17th-century Dutch artist who adored calm, white, minimal interiors, mostly those of churches, of which he painted some...
One of the most difficult things about being human is how easily influenced we are by our childhoods — and more particularly, our parents. The human...
Some people assume that you can’t really say what a good — or indeed a bad — parent actually is. But we don’t agree. So we’ve designed a...
In order to recover from many kinds of mental distress, there’s really no alternative but to get acquainted with psychotherapy. Though often dense...
One of the strangest and saddest phenomena of psychological life is that there are parents, too many parents, who end up — while sometimes only half...
The phenomenon of being ‘triggered’ — though it may, at times, be applied too liberally — sits on top of a hugely important concept in...
The most fundamental idea at the heart of modern psychotherapy is that in order to heal ourselves from our neuroses in the present, we have to...
One of the most continuously fascinating ideas in psychotherapy is the concept of projection. What this means, simply put, is that all of us have a...
It’s natural for most of us to spend time worrying about our reputation: what others think of us, whether we are deemed good or bad by the...
One of the stranger but more useful suggestions of psychotherapy — and in particular, a branch of it known as Transactional Analysis — is that all...
There’s a strange law of psychology that reveals that small children who are treated badly by their parents will always — rather strangely —...
There is a form of therapy which is, right now, in most countries of the world, illegal but which stands to become a dominant way of doing therapy...
It sounds really strange to speak of the upsides of being ill. Surely there are only downsides? But rather than assuming, as we normally do, that our...
One of the more curious aspects of the ways we are built is that it can take us a very long time indeed to work out what we need in order to be happy....
One of the most painful patterns of mental life goes by the term OCD: obsessive compulsive disorder. To the sufferer of OCD, there is something that...
It’s one of the great paradoxes of mental life that we’re often unable to access our true feelings about important matters. What we really think...
What should in an ideal world define someone as a writer isn’t that they publish books, or give talks at literary festivals or wear black; it’s...
When we think of an ‘addict’, certain stock images come to mind: a homeless person in the park sniffing glue, a gaunt figure with a heroine needle...
Part of the pain of growing older is that we can start to see how much, at certain points, we misunderstood ourselves, what the costs of missing...
How Good Are You at Communication in Love?It’s often said that one of the most vital indicators of success in…
When it comes to deciding what to do with our lives, we are frequently presented with what looks like a very painful choice: the passionate path vs...
The problem with libraries is that they can be so large, impressive, and filled with knowledge that they unwittingly embed in us an idea that...
One of the finest things about being a baby is that our minds can be read by others. Without us needing to say anything, people around us will have a...
We’re unlucky enough if we meet with people who want to do us wrong, show us contempt and take advantage of us. But this is as nothing next to the...
One of the most useful realisations we might come to about ourselves is that we are ‘paranoid.’ The word is easy to laugh off as impossibly...
The word ‘trauma’ — meaning a terrible event we live through that cannot be remembered but which generates painful related symptoms — captures...
We are used to thinking of what we call the news as a tool that can help us to vanquish ignorance: we will, thanks to its updates, properly understand...
However healthy it often is to try to fit in and assume we must just be like everyone else, there are also benefits in sometimes accepting that we...
Self-Knowledge: Know Yourself However healthy it often is to try to fit in and assume we must just be like everyone else, there are also benefits in...
Work: Media & Technology We are used to thinking of what we call the news as a tool that can help us to vanquish ignorance: we will, thanks to its...
Should I Go to Therapy? A huge amount of suspicion still surrounds the business of seeking psychotherapy. And yet, far from evidence of mental...
What’s Your Attachment Style? The theory of attachment was developed by the English psychoanalyst John Bowlby in the 1950s to capture different...
Are You Prone to Insomnia? Our sleeping patterns can appear to be an accident of nature or physiology. However, the amount that we are able to sleep...
Self-Knowledge: Trauma & Childhood The word ‘trauma’ — meaning a terrible event we live through that cannot be remembered but which generates...
Relationships: Conflicts We’re unlucky enough if we meet with people who want to do us wrong, show us contempt and take advantage of us. But this...
Self-Knowledge: Fear & Insecurity One of the most useful realisations we might come to about ourselves is that we are ‘paranoid.’ The word is...
Self-Knowledge: Growth & Maturity It’s an enormous privilege to have an adolescence — and, to an extent rarely spoken about, not everyone gets...
Self-Knowledge: Fulfilment One of the great impediments to understanding bits of our lives properly is our overly-ready assumption that we already...
Self-Knowledge: Trauma & Childhood There are few more important tasks for parents than to be able to listen properly to their children, that is,...
Calm: Anxiety One of the most painful patterns of mental life goes by the term OCD: obsessive compulsive disorder. To the sufferer of OCD, there is...
Work: Good Work The problem with libraries is that they can be so large, impressive, and filled with knowledge that they unwittingly embed in us an...