January 2011
13 posts
Meet Dr. Freud: Psychiatry and Mental Health in... →
Does psychoanalysis have a future in an authoritarian state?
The Trouble with Bright Girls (Psychology Today) →
Successful women know only too well that in any male-dominated profession, we often find ourselves at a distinct disadvantage. We are routinely underestimated, underutilized, and even underpaid. Studies show that women need to perform at extraordinarily high levels, just to appear moderately competent compared to our male coworkers.
But in my experience, smart and talented women rarely realize...
“You are constantly told in depression that your judgment is compromised, but a...”
– Andrew Solomon, The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression
Why the responsible reporting of mental health... →
Ask people who have been diagnosed with a mental illness – especially a serious one like Schizophrenia – what they think about media coverage of the issue and certain words come up time and again. Words like: ‘offensive’, ‘stigmatising’, ‘sensationalist’, ‘inaccurate’ and ‘distorted’.
Similar terms are also used to describe the depiction...
The Neuroscience of Music (Frontal Cortex) →
Why does music make us feel? On the one hand, music is a purely abstract art form, devoid of language or explicit ideas. The stories it tells are all subtlety and subtext. And yet, even though music says little, it still manages to touch us deep, to tickle some universal nerves. When listening to our favorite songs, our body betrays all the symptoms of emotional arousal. The pupils in our eyes...
In Defense of Psychoanalysis (Intelligent Life) →
…The irony is that in becoming more “scientific”, CBT becomes less therapeutic. Now, Freud himself liked to be thought of as a scientist (he began his career in neurology, working on the spinal ganglia), but it’s the non-scientific features that make psychoanalysis the more, not the less, powerful. I’m referring to the therapeutic relationship itself. Although like psychoanalysis largely a...
Creativity determines sexual success, research... →
The more creative a person is, the more sexual partners they are likely to have, according to a pioneering study which could explain the behaviour of notorious womanisers such as poets Lord Byron and Dylan Thomas.
The research, by the University of Newcastle upon Tyne and the Open University in the UK, found that professional artists and poets have around twice as many sexual partners as those...
“There is a fallacy that the powerful emotion of youth mellows with time. Not...”
– Nicole Krauss, Great House
Social Animal (The New Yorker) →
We are living in the middle of a revolution in consciousness. Over the past few decades, geneticists, neuroscientists, psychologists, sociologists, economists, and others have made great strides in understanding the inner working of the human mind. Far from being dryly materialistic, their work illuminates the rich underwater world where character is formed and wisdom grows. They are giving us a...
Sustainable Love (New York Times) →
A lasting marriage does not always signal a happy marriage. Plenty of miserable couples have stayed together for children, religion or other practical reasons.
But for many couples, it’s just not enough to stay together. They want a relationship that is meaningful and satisfying. In short, they want a sustainable marriage.
“The things that make a marriage last have more to do with...
Is Music for Wooing, Mothering, Bonding—or Is It... →
When Charles Darwin listened to music, he asked himself, what is it for? Philosophers had pondered the mathematical beauty of music for thousands of years, but Darwin wondered about its connection to biology. Humans make music just as beavers build dams and peacocks show off their tail feathers, he reasoned, so music must have evolved. What drove its evolution was hard for him to divine, however....
Happy New Year!
Well, after taking some much-needed time off from work (and this site), I’m back with the new year and ready to resume filling your head with mental health related links, quotes, pictures, and videos. :)
Last month actually marked the 3rd birthday of this site - time flies, no? - and I wanted to be sure and thank you (all 20,000 of you that now follow the site!) for your continuing...