TS Elliot measured his life in coffee spoons. It seems these days we express ours in terms of kittens. This use of irrelevance to give meaning to life reminds me of a woman who appeared in a BBC television survival series I co-presented called “Bare Necessities”. She used her survival instincts to make a swing for herself […]
The Threat of Kittens Read More »
The MoD have always been unwilling to acknowledge that military service can have adverse effects on people. Their preferred message follows those pumped out by military recruitment campaigns: “Be the Best”, “thousands of jobs available”, in “hundreds of different careers”. Today The Royal British Legion TRBL launches a survey of Service-related hearing problems. It’s hardly
The MoD Really Must Start Caring for its People – NOW Read More »
Deciding when you’ve won a battle is hard enough. Once upon a time, this was decided by Heralds from both sides, who argued it out then the combatants’ leaders agreed to the decision. If a King is killed, that’s a definite result, which might decide who wins the actual war. These days it’s not so
How Do We Win the Afghan War? Read More »
Neuroscience frightens me. Thinking about the processes within the 3.5lb lumps of tofu that allow us to think about ourselves is to question the reality of our flickering self-awareness. It makes me feel vertiginous, like staring into the infinity of images you see when looking into a mirror that’s reflecting another mirror behind it. We
Neuroscience, Memory and Art Read More »
When an FBI forensic artist drew portraits of women according to their own descriptions of themselves, and then a second sketch according to the descriptions of another woman they’d met, the differences were incredible – and telling: http://realbeautysketches.dove.com/ Apparently only 4% of the world’s women believe themselves to be beautiful. I don’t know if there
We Need to be Beautiful Read More »
An article in the New Yorker triggered off some ideas I’ve been thinking about for the past few days. It was a about an agency setting itself up to sell celebrities’ free time for huge amounts of money – as if they were empty hotel rooms. For a self-aware person to sign up to this,
Self-Awareness as a Survival Mechanism – and Duty Read More »
Tragedy sells newspapers, Intruding on grief isn’t new, ought to be banned, and is now part of newspapers desperate fight for survival.
News International Phone Hacking and Bereaved Forces Families Read More »
The psychological technique of family constellations provided a remarkable weekend workshop experience. Created to help the victims of war – specifically of the Holocaust, it has obvious benefits for war veterans, but being so astonishingly powerful, requires great care.