Christian Jarrett
Editor, Psyche
A cognitive neuroscientist by training, Christian was the founding editor of the British Psychological Society’s Research Digest and an award-winning journalist on The Psychologist magazine. His books include The Rough Guide to Psychology, 30-Second Psychology and Great Myths of the Brain. His latest is Be Who You Want: Unlocking the Science of Personality Change, published in 2021. Christian will never forget holding a human brain in his hands as part of a neuroanatomy class, the grey mass so heavy as if filled still with memories and dreams. Find him on Twitter @Psych_Writer.
Written by Christian Jarrett
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Mood and emotion
Trigger warnings don’t help people cope with distressing material
Christian Jarrett
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Neuroscience
Acting changes the brain: it’s how actors get lost in a role
Christian Jarrett
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Human evolution
Xenophobic one minute, tolerant the next: humans are strange primates
Christian Jarrett
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Consciousness and altered states
Ketamine trips are uncannily like near-death experiences
Christian Jarrett
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Life stages
To boost your self-esteem, write about chapters of your life
Christian Jarrett
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Personality
Do you have a self-actualised personality? Maslow revisited
Christian Jarrett
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Mood and emotion
Psychology’s five revelations for finding your true calling
Christian Jarrett
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Personality
The bad news on human nature, in 10 findings from psychology
Christian Jarrett
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Personality
Acting like an extravert has benefits, but not for introverts
Christian Jarrett
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Mental health
Psychotherapy is not harmless: on the side effects of CBT
Christian Jarrett
Edited by Christian Jarrett
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Mental health
People not professionals
Training individuals to support one another through difficult times is a profound step forward in our mental health crisis
Arjun Kapoor & Jasmine Kalha
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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
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Teaching and learning
Learning styles don’t exist
A teaching approach that is based on students’ preferences sounds laudable. But this misunderstands how learning happens
Carl Hendrick
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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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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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Consciousness and altered states
Pivotal mental states
Spiritual highs and mental breakdowns are both products of the same evolved brain system granting us the power to transform
Ari Brouwer
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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
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Film and visual culture
Fear not
You might think that horror movies are a delicious, trashy pleasure. But watching them has surprisingly wholesome effects
Mathias Clasen
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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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Social psychology
A good scrap
Disagreements can be unpleasant, even offensive, but they are vital to human reason. Without them we remain in the dark
Ian Leslie
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Mental health
The seed of suffering
The p-factor is the dark matter of psychiatry: an invisible, unifying force that might lie behind a multitude of mental disorders
Alex Riley
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Sleep and dreams
Nightmares becalmed
I’m a dream engineer. Through touch, scent and sound, we help people rescript the dramas of their sleeping lives
Michelle Carr