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Psychology

Essays and videos offering insights into the self, relationships, cognition and neuroscience

Addiction Ageing and death Childhood and adolescence Cognition and intelligence Consciousness and altered states Family life Gender and identity Language and linguistics Life stages Love and friendship Mental health Mood and emotion Neurodiversity Neuroscience Personality Pleasure and pain Psychiatry and psychotherapy Self-improvement Sex and sexuality Sleep and dreams Social psychology Spirituality Teaching and learning Technology and the self Wellbeing

A man floating in the sea beneath a dramatic, stormy sky with large, dark clouds.

essay

Technology and the self

We need raw awe

In this tech-vexed age, our life on screens prevents us from experiencing the mysteries and transformative wonder of life

Kirk Schneider

Photo of shattered glass with multiple cracks against a black background.

essay

Philosophy of mind

Rage against the machine

For all the promise and dangers of AI, computers plainly can’t think. To think is to resist – something no machine does

Alva Noë

A young woman and a man, both dressed formally, sit at a table with an electronic device in front of them. The woman is engaging with the device, which has several buttons and dials, while the man observes attentively. The setting appears to be an office or classroom. The image is in black and white.

essay

Technology and the self

Tomorrow people

For the entire 20th century, it had felt like telepathy was just around the corner. Why is that especially true now?

Roger Luckhurst

Colourful hand-drawn illustration of a busy market scene. Background shows fruit stall and vendor. A yellow sign reads DO NOT LITTER.

video

Cities

A lush, whirlwind tribute to the diversity of life in a northern English county

3 minutes

Colourful illustration of the Mad Hatter holding a clock showing 13 o’clock. His eyes are spirals. The background is filled with small images of the same character.

essay

Consciousness and altered states

Acid media

How perforated squares of trippy blotter paper allowed outlaw chemists and wizard-alchemists to dose the world with LSD

Erik Davis

Illustration of a person and a cat doing yoga in front of a fireplace, with floating planets and stars around them, a vase, a calendar, and a smartphone nearby.

essay

Consciousness and altered states

A reader’s guide to microdosing

How to use small doses of psychedelics to lift your mood, enhance your focus, and fire your creativity

Tunde Aideyan

A man wearing a knit hat, facing sideways in a misty outdoor setting, with a stack of balanced stones in the background.

video

Values and beliefs

A Zen Buddhist priest voices the deep matters he usually ponders in silence

5 minutes

People dressed in horned costumes and holding pitchforks surrounded by red smoke at night during a festival or celebration.

essay

Animals and humans

An animal myself

When we imagine ourselves as another creature, we become more attuned to the world around us – and better at being human

Erica Berry

Geometric shapes with triangular patterns in blue, purple, and yellow on a black background. Shapes include squares, triangles, cones, and other polyhedra.

video

Film and visual culture

Stop-motion origami unfurls in a playful exploration of how senses overlap

3 minutes

A crab is seen on a sandy beach. In the background and out of focus is a woman in a swimsuit

essay

Philosophy of mind

What is it like to be a crab?

Consciousness science should move past a focus on complex mammalian brains to study the behaviour of ‘simpler’ animals

Kristin Andrews

A yellow orchid flower in a vase is lit by sunlight from a side window in a living room. The background is out of focus

essay

Psychiatry and psychotherapy

Psychosis and psychedelics

In the 1960s, psychedelic research was driven underground. Now it’s re-emerging – with lessons for the study of psychosis

Phoebe Friesen

A Panama hat rests on a bed bathed in afternoon light filtering through gauze curtains. There is a slight motion blur

essay

Consciousness and altered states

Déjà vu

Have you been here before? The eerie sensation is the shadow of your mind searching inward for clues to its own survival

Anne Cleary

People walking towards a crashed aeroplane in a snowy field with trees in the background.

video

Meaning and the good life

The world turns vivid, strange and philosophical for one plane crash survivor

16 minutes

Abstract artwork with geometric shapes, organic forms and pastel colours intersecting in a mandala-like pattern, with gold and blue swirls on a dark background.

essay

Consciousness and altered states

Animal, vegetable, mineral

Cruel and unscientific, the ‘vegetative state’ diagnosis stems from a hierarchical and bigoted view of all living things

Ben Platts-Mills

Two people carry pumpkins near an Amoco petrol pump with a motorcyclist and a garage visible in the background.

essay

Metaphysics

Are coincidences real?

I am an unequivocal rationalist and yet I still want to see something strange and wonderful in life’s weird coincidences

Paul Broks

Painting of a silhouetted figure sitting in front of two windows, with a glowing outline emphasizing their form in a dark room.

essay

Consciousness and altered states

Stuck with the soul

The idea of the soul is obviously a nonsense, yet its immaterial mysterious nature has deep hooks in the human psyche

David P Barash

Painting of a garden party with people chatting near a yellow house, some holding drinks. Trees and more guests in the background.

video

Art

At 95, an artist paints swiftly to capture the fugitive light

6 minutes

Graphic of a chimpanzee and two colourful, masked figures in lab coats standing behind a chessboard on a purple background.

video

Evolution

Why making if-then connections might be the key to consciousness

5 minutes

A boy sleeps sitting against a resting cow on a paved street, surrounded by pigeons.

essay

Consciousness and altered states

Seeing and somethingness

An evolutionary approach to consciousness can resolve the ‘hard problem’ – with radical implications for animal sentience

Nicholas Humphrey

Abstract artwork generated by AI with bold swirls and lines in red, black, yellow, blue, and white, creating a dynamic and vibrant pattern.

video

Film and visual culture

With human help, AIs are generating a new aesthetics. The results are trippy

9 minutes

A woman in a navy blouse speaks animatedly with hands outstretched, seated in a library with bookshelves and a wooden table in the background.

video

Neuroscience

The brain repurposed our sense of physical distance to understand social closeness

5 minutes

A person in a thick, shaggy costume standing on bales of hay outdoors, chained at one foot. Rural landscape with trees and houses in the background.

essay

Knowledge

Imaginology

We need a new kind of approach to learning that shifts imagination from the periphery to the foundation of all knowledge

Stephen T Asma

A person stands on a rocky cliff edge overlooking a vast canyon under a clear blue sky.

video

Consciousness and altered states

You need to make friends with pain to run through the Grand Canyon and back

5 minutes

Illustration of a person standing alone on a green hill, with a stylised, multicoloured sky in the background.

video

Wellbeing

A tender poem doubles as a guide to sitting comfortably in one’s own company

3 minutes