How you make me feel; projection and its identification.

Why do we trust some people and not others?  Why do we admire some people?   Why do some people make us uncomfortable?  Is it because they remind us of significant figures in our lives; our mother, our father, a brother or sister, a lover, a husband, wife, a teacher?   Are... Read more »

The past is another country. Or is it?

Friar Barnadine: "Thou hast committed--" Barabas: "Fornication-- but that was in another country / And besides, the wench is dead."                      Christopher Marlow (The Jew of Malta) What made people like Guy  Burgess or Anthony Blunt rebel against their society, betray their  country and spy for the soviet union?  Was it a reaction against... Read more »

King George, the stammerer.

Bertie was never expected to become King.  David, his elder brother, appeared a far more charismatic leader.  People turned a blind eye to his dalliances with actresses and socialites as they had with his grandfather and nobody thought he would give up the throne for Mrs Simpson.  But he did. ... Read more »

Diogenes in the Age of Reflection

‘You’re rather like Diogenes in his barrel’,  David declared on his fourth visit to my little cottage in Edensor.   Was that a compliment?   Well, on the principle of the glass being half full, I decided that it was.  I quite liked the idea of being perceived by the medical fraternity... Read more »

Flu, and the yellow bird has flown

Sorry to moan, but I’ve got flu.   At least that’s what I think I’ve got.   It could be the return of the auld trubble – the malaria, but it doesn’t quite fit the pattern.  I begin to feel wobbly and shivery about dusk every afternoon, not every other day like I did... Read more »

Ghosts in the Nursery

Henry James leaves his stories open to his readers interpretations.  That is the source of their intrigue.  The ‘Turn of the Screw’ is his most famous and most chilling novel,  but why?  Is it because it explores, albeit obliquely,  that most horrific of topics, the loss of innocence.     The governess... Read more »

You shouldn’t ever go back

I rarely watch television.  Most of it is rubbish; idiotic game shows, predictable soaps, tedious news commentary and mind numbing adverts.  But ‘The Song of Lunch’,  the dramatisation of Christopher Reid’s narrative, superbly performed by Alan Rickman and Emma Thompson,  was something different.    Shocking, intense and bleak, the poem is... Read more »

Because – you’re worth it!

She didn’t believe in anything very much.  Communism, fascism, altruism, capitalism, collectivism; they were all the same to her; forms of subjugation and oppression.  No, what Ayn Rand believed in was objectivism, "the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life,... Read more »

White ribbons; repression and its consequences

Eichvald is a small Baronial village in northern Prussia, a patriarchal society dominated by powerful male autocrats who justified their abuse of their womenfolk and their children on the grounds that it was what they needed.  ‘This will hurt me more than it hurts you’.    It is the autumn of... Read more »

Bush and Blair; a hubristic ‘folie a deux’.

They were made for each other,  weren’t they?  Not so much a marriage made in heaven as an accident waiting to happen.  There was George W. Bush, the rich privileged son of a previous senator and president, the playboy, the drunkard, the ne’er-do-well, who went into politics by default.  He was... Read more »

Haunted! ‘Trauma’ and McGrath’s ghosts.

Charlie is a psychiatrist, an expert on trauma. His marriage to Agnes broke up after her brother, Danny, committed suicide.  Danny was a Vietnamese veteran whose buddy was killed by a booby trap device right next to him.  He was also Charlie’s patient.  He blew his brains out after Charlie... Read more »

Possession; on stage and off it.

Good actors, declared Sir Richard Eyre, speaking last week at The Guild of Psychotherapists annual lecture, have to be possessed by the characters they are playing.  They have to immerse themselves in their character’s world, feel what it is like to be them, experience the passion and then act it... Read more »

Tempus fugit.

Time flies, the old man cried, as the alarm clock struck him on the back of the head.  For the elderly, time does indeed fly; not just the clock but the days, the weeks, the years.  Time seems to shorten, to press in on itself, as we get older. But for... Read more »

Towards the vanishing point.

  I had some pizza that I made the previous night and thought to share that and the remains of a bottle of claret with her.  But she is not right.  Julie has told me that she gets very emotional at the prospect of me coming round.  I have recently begun... Read more »

Failing Better.

  'Ever tried? Ever failed? No matter.  Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.'                                               Samuel Beckett   Don't give up! Learn from your mistakes. Do better next time. Remember Robert Bruce and the spider, Alfred and the cakes.  Just pick yourself up, dust yourself down and start all over again.  That seems be the message... Read more »

People watching; their lives in their faces.

  A troupe of black musicians with southern accents and joyful, toothy grins were waiting to board the flight to Stockholm.  They wore earphones and were jigging, jerking, twitching, beating out syncopated rhythms on their knees, table and the arms of their seats.      In the restaurant, a conclave of heavy metal... Read more »

Psychological influences on the gut

The opportunity to retrain as a psychoanalytical psychotherapist sharpened my interest on the influence of the meaning of life experience on gut function and on the role of psychological therapies in treating gut illness. Collaboration with Professor Francis Creed in Manchester led to the award of a large dual centre... Read more »

Emotional upset determines the persistence of gastroenteritis after the infection has gone

About 10% of people develop persistent diarrhoea after an attack of gastroenteritis even though there is no evidence of an infective agent. Studies conducted by Dr Kok-Ann Gwee in collaboration with Drs Mike McKendrick and Professor Steve Collins from McMaster University in Ontario revealed that anxiety, depression and life trauma... Read more »

The intestinal regulation of eating behaviour

Having shown that intestinal infusion of lipid will delay gastric emptying, probably by the release of CCK, we were interested to find out whether it would inhibit eating behaviour. The discovery that it did and was more potent than isoenergetic quantities of carbohydrate initiated a new area of research. ... Read more »