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Psychology

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

Decolonising psychology

At times complicit in racism and oppression, psychology has also been a fertile ground for radical and liberatory thought

Rami Gabriel

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Pleasure and pain

Me versus myself

I work against myself through procrastination, distraction and addiction. Why do I consistently sabotage my own life?

Eliane Glaser

Illustration of a child sitting with their head down and knees up, next to a toy box with a teddy bear sticking out. An adult’s legs, dressed in a red skirt and brown shoes, are visible seated nearby on the right.
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Psychiatry and psychotherapy

The therapist who hated me

Going to a child psychoanalyst four times a week for three years was bad enough. Reading what she wrote about me was worse

Michael Bacon

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Psychiatry and psychotherapy

Trauma on a loop

I was the victim of a carjacking. The trauma from that experience was unendurable. Then I discovered eye movement therapy

Madison McLoughlin

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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

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Biography and memoir

Flat places

Whenever I stand in a flat landscape, I feel myself becoming weightless, taken out of my childhood full of painful nothing

Noreen Masud

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Mood and emotion

When grief doesn’t end

Suffering the sudden death of a loved person leaves some survivors stuck in grief. Can they win their lives back – and how?

Martin W Angler

A group of people sit in a circle on the floor of a room with a stone wall, engaging in discussion; shoes are placed near the entrance.
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Psychiatry and psychotherapy

Analysis for the people

Group therapy promised to be both democratic and radical, but it failed to take hold. Has its time finally come?

Jess Cotton

An illustration of people outside a building in winter, with snow-covered trees. Some are gathered around a vending machine, others sitting and looking at a diagram.
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Psychiatry and psychotherapy

Tōjisha-kenkyū

This radical movement makes space for people with mental health and other challenges to study (and celebrate) themselves

Satsuki Ayaya & Junko Kitanaka

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Psychiatry and psychotherapy

The space between us

In order to understand and heal mental distress, we must see our minds as existing in relationships, not inside our heads

James Barnes

Two people sitting in chairs having a conversation, with a speech bubble between them. One is holding a piece of paper.
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video

Psychiatry and psychotherapy

Pondering the peculiar one-sided intimacy of the client-therapist relationship

3 minutes

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Mental health

The helpful delusion

Evidence is growing that mental illness is more than dysfunction, with enormous implications for treatment

Justin Garson

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Self-improvement

The art of listening

To listen well is not only a kindness to others but also, as the psychologist Carl Rogers made clear, a gift to ourselves

M M Owen

Person in a blue tracksuit wrestles a large blue dummy in a padded room with turquoise curtains and diamond-patterned walls.
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Psychiatry and psychotherapy

Bad therapy

Some psychotherapeutic approaches are not only ineffective, they’re actively harmful. We’re now starting to identify them

Yevgeny Botanov, Alexander Williams & John Sakaluk

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Mood and emotion

When hope gets in the way

Hope is usually seen as a positive agent of change that spares us from pain. But it can also undermine healing and growth

Santiago Delboy

A large community of all ages, some in eccentric clothing, pose around a rustic building numbered 212 under a sign, ‘CHAS. McMILLAN’.
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Subcultures

The dropout: a history

The dropout was not just a hippy-trippy hedonist but a paranoid soul, who feared brainwashing and societal control

Charlie Williams

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Mood and emotion

The meaning of anger

Is anger like energy, forever changing form but never dissipating, or part of our repertoire of desires, the cry of a need unmet?

Josh Cohen

A person with prosthetic legs and a striped shirt standing by a glass door with a small dog inside a wood-panelled room.
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Psychiatry and psychotherapy

The humane asylum

As a society we are failing people with severe, persistent mental illness. It’s time to reimagine institutional care

Madeleine Ritts & Daniel Rosenbaum

Three orange chairs with metal legs are aligned against a textured concrete wall on a wooden floor.
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Psychiatry and psychotherapy

Chairwork

It is a powerful, liberating therapy that lets you (literally) shift perspective on who you are, and who you could become

Scott Kellogg & Amanda Garcia Torres

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Human rights and justice

Asylum

Patients and psychiatrists at Saint-Alban in France fought against fascism side by side. What can we learn from them?

Ben Platts-Mills

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Philosophy of mind

The mind does not exist

The terms ‘mind’ and ‘mental’ are messy, harmful and distracting. We should get rid of them

Joe Gough

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Neurodiversity

After neurodiversity

We live in a world that must move beyond identity politics and embrace new models of the mind. Enter psydiversity

Bonnie Evans

A colourful 3D rendering of a brain structure on a black background showing various regions in vibrant hues.
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Mental health

World wide open

Deep brain stimulation not only treats psychiatric disease – it changes the whole person, boosting confidence and openness

Julian Kiverstein, Erik Rietveld & Damiaan Denys

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Mood and emotion

Radical acceptance

The painful feelings you avoid grow twisted in the dark. By facing your sorrows and struggles you can take back your life

Joshua Coleman