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Psychology

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

Addiction Ageing and death Childhood and adolescence Cognition and intelligence Consciousness and altered states Family life Gender and identity Language and linguistics Life stages Love and friendship Mental health Mood and emotion Neurodiversity Neuroscience Personality Pleasure and pain Psychiatry and psychotherapy Self-improvement Sex and sexuality Sleep and dreams Social psychology Spirituality Teaching and learning Technology and the self Wellbeing

LatestPopular

Collage image of a smiling woman in patterned dress with colourful wavy borders set on a beach background.

video

Love and friendship

Never marry a man you love too much, and other views on romance in Sierra Leone

5 minutes

Sepia-toned photo of a person in formal Victorian attire, standing with a slightly tilted head, against an ornate backdrop.

essay

Gender and identity

Requeering Wilde

Oscar Wilde is an icon of gay liberation from secrecy. But his life and his sexuality were not so simple – nor so binary

Sam Mills

An older man in a red cap and printed T-shirt looking into the distance.

video

Virtues and vices

Why Bennie tried to disappear, and what happened when he was found decades later

16 minutes

A child in a pink raincoat jumping in a puddle on a city street on a rainy day with terraced houses in the background.

essay

Philosophy of mind

Suffused with causality

Humans have a superpower that makes us uniquely capable of controlling the world: our ability to understand cause and effect

Mariel Goddu

Black-and-white photo of a person looking at vintage Honeywell 200 computer tape drives labelled A and B.

video

History of technology

Curious singles and tech sceptics – what ‘computer dating’ looked like in 1966

6 minutes

A cupcake with pink icing topped with mealworms, surrounded by other cupcakes.

essay

Food and drink

Adjust your disgust

The future of food is nutritious and sustainable – if we can overcome our instinctual revulsion to insects and lab-grown meat

Alexandra Plakias

video

Cognition and intelligence

A father forgets his child’s name for the first time in this poetic reflection on memory

4 minutes

Dried ground leaves being poured from a scoop into a container indoors.

essay

Addiction

The kratom question

Millions are turning to an unregulated herbal extract to curb their opioid addiction. But do the risks outweigh the benefits?

Xi Chen

A young girl with curly hair applies makeup in front of a ring-lit mirror, her reflection visible.

video

Technology and the self

The commodified childhood – scenes from two sisters’ lives in the creator economy

14 minutes

Black and white photo of man standing in front of a massive industrial tunnel with a Jeumont sign.

essay

Neuroscience

Why nothing matters

It took centuries for people to embrace the zero. Now it’s helping neuroscientists understand how the brain perceives absences

Benjy Barnett

Photo of a crowd with a focused young woman looking to the side, surrounded by blurred faces in the foreground.

essay

Personality

The highly sensitive person

Those with this little-known trait think more deeply and feel more empathy. But they also deal with significant challenges

Elaine Aron

Photo of a woman meditating by a fire in a dimly lit room with artwork on the walls and others seated in the background.

video

Anthropology

For an Amazonian female shaman, ayahuasca ceremonies are a rite and a business

30 minutes

Photo of two surgeons in blue scrubs and masks focused on a procedure, with one surgeon’s glasses reflecting the surgery.

essay

Medicine

When I lost my intuition

For years, I practised medicine with cool certainty, comfortable with life-and-death decisions. Then, one day, I couldn’t

Ronald W Dworkin

A photo of a person walking on a snowy path beside an icy river with floating ice chunks.

essay

Thinkers and theories

The winter of civilisation

Byung-Chul Han’s relentless critiques of digital capitalism reveal how this suffocating system creates hollowed-out lives

Josh Cohen

Photo of children playing in the desert in windy conditions, with sand swirling around them and smiles on their faces.

essay

Childhood and adolescence

Hegemony and childcare

Early childhood development interventions in the Global South is a huge industry built on highly questionable assumptions

Francesca Mezzenzana & Gabriel Scheidecker

Photo of a study with a wooden desk, red curtains, bust sculptures and a leather chair in a well-lit room.

essay

Psychiatry and psychotherapy

The art in the analyst’s room

The consulting office reflects the personality of the therapist, while also subtly shaping the experience of their patients

Anna Parker

Illustration of hands typing on a keyboard with handwritten notes and a man in a sequence of frames.

essay

Computing and artificial intelligence

Chatbots of the dead

We can now create compelling experiences of talking with our dead. Is this ghoulish, therapeutic or something else again?

Amy Kurzweil & Daniel Story

Photo of three boys riding wooden carts down a street in an urban setting, with onlookers in the background.

video

Sports and games

Havana’s streets become racetracks in this exhilarating portrait of children at play

5 minutes

Photo of a person sitting in a dimly lit church with stained glass windows and sun rays filtering through.

video

Spirituality

Through rituals of prayer, a monk cultivates a quietly radical concept of freedom

4 minutes

Vintage film poster with illustrated women underwater surrounded by bubbles text reads “Primitive and Exciting”.

essay

Public health

A very American fear

Moral panics about erotica have coursed through the country’s history. Why do so many Americans think of porn as harm?

Rebecca L Davis

Illustration of two people with closed eyes softly singing into a microphone, featuring simple brushstroke style.

video

Language and linguistics

Why Susan listens to recordings of herself speaking a language she no longer remembers

5 minutes

Painting of a serene night scene with a full moon reflecting on a dark blue lake surrounded by silhouettes of rocks and trees.

essay

Stories and literature

The listening gift

It is the dark matter of conversation, the white space around a poem. For Rilke, listening is receiving the divine

Faith Lawrence

Colourful, whimsical house with ornate details and greenery in foreground, photo taken outdoors in daylight.

video

Home

How an artist transformed a dilapidated hunting lodge into a house made of dreams

8 minutes

Abstract painting of two distorted faces with geometric shapes in orange, purple and brown tones.

essay

Psychiatry and psychotherapy

Psychodynamic nonsense

After decades of practising psychotherapy, I believe it has little foundation in science and often causes harm

Niklas Serning