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Psychology

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

The unique fellowship between teens and young puffins on a remote Icelandic island

20 minutes

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essay

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

A group of girls walk past the Washington Monument on the National Mall in Washington, DC
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Gender and identity

Silencing of the girls

Girls are still in a bad bargain with patriarchy: the price of relationship is keeping their true thoughts to themselves

Carol Gilligan

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video

Childhood and adolescence

Striking shadow puppetry illuminates a skater kid’s memories of Boy Scout camp

12 minutes

A smiling young girl and a cat, nose to nose, by a window sill, with pinecones beside them
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Stories and literature

The best stories smell

When scents are used to intensify a narrative, they heighten young readers’ emotions and enrich their memory banks

Natalia Kucirkova

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Religion

From God’s shoes to satellites in heaven – children weigh in on religion

8 minutes

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essay

Human evolution

How to grow a human

Our childhood is preposterously long compared to other animals. Is it the secret to our evolutionary success?

Brenna Hassett

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Family life

Amazonian childcare

In the eyes of the Runa people, Western kids grow up indulged, over-mothered and incapable of facing outward to the world

Francesca Mezzenzana

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Education

Unschooling

It takes nerve to go against the grain and take your child out of school. But, for some, that’s when learning really starts

Naomi Fisher & Heidi Steel

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Life stages

At 14, Asal is excited about her engagement. Her relatives all have their own opinions

33 minutes

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Personality

Born that way

Confident or shy, our temperament is mostly baked-in from birth. But how that influences our lives is up for grabs

Gina Mireault

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Stories and literature

Leave them alone

Parenting advice from D H Lawrence: don’t smother your children with love. They are more sagacious than you think

Lara Feigel

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Subcultures

The utopian machine

For children like me, growing up in an utopian community, life was a bewildering chaos of freedom and indoctrination

Susanna Crossman

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Subcultures

The great regression

To understand why so many adults are acting just like children, don’t blame Millennials – look to Japan in the 1990s

Matt Alt

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video

Childhood and adolescence

When Paradise, California burned, its teens became instant climate refugees

23 minutes

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essay

Childhood and adolescence

The parentified child

When parents cast a child into the role of mediator, friend and carer, the wounds are profound. But recovery is possible

Nivida Chandra

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Sex and sexuality

Idealising the predator

How did certain French intellectuals get away with preying upon young girls, shamelessly, in public and over decades?

Lily Dunn

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video

Work

‘Why does life have to be so complicated?’ A school trip to the world of work

12 minutes

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Philosophy of mind

Forget babbling and toddling – mindreading is babies’ most incredible skill

7 minutes

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Sex and sexuality

What does the Dutch model of comprehensive, ‘shame-free’ sex-ed look like?

9 minutes

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Teaching and learning

The charity that teaches underprivileged kids to humanely hunt their next meal

10 minutes

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Addiction

The addiction trap

Our inability to treat substance use disorders stems from a narrow-minded view that brains and genes are their real cause

Judith Grisel

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Childhood and adolescence

We’re all teenagers now

Adolescence isn’t a time of life so much as a frame of mind. Liberating yet damaging, it’s transformed the US and the world

Paul Howe

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Childhood and adolescence

Attached

From cradle to grave, we are soothed and rocked by attachments – our source of joy and pain, and the essence of who we are

Mostafa El-Kalliny & Zoe R Donaldson