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
essay
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
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
essay
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
essay
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
essay
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
essay
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
essay
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
video
Psychiatry and psychotherapy
Pondering the peculiar one-sided intimacy of the client-therapist relationship
3 minutes
essay
Mental health
The helpful delusion
Evidence is growing that mental illness is more than dysfunction, with enormous implications for treatment
Justin Garson
essay
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
essay
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
essay
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
essay
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
essay
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
essay
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
essay
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
essay
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
essay
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
essay
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
essay
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
essay
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
essay
Psychiatry and psychotherapy
Rewiring your life
A radical therapy based on eye movements can desensitise painful memories, heal hurts and aid transformation at warp speed
Deborah Korn
essay
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