Relationships
The Repetition Compulsion
One of the most remarkable ideas in the history of psychoanalysis is to be found in Freud’s 1920 paper ‘Beyond…
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Sociability
The Challenges of Male Friendships
Men are lonely not through any specific deficiency on their part but because of an inherent conflict between what is required of being a man on the one hand and what is involved in being a friend on the other.
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Sociability
Why Introverts Are As They Are
We become introverted or extroverted as a result of particular experiences; it is our distinctive path through childhood that determines at which end of the spectrum we are going to fall.
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Sociability
The Boring Person
The boring person isn’t really boring; they are in manic flight from what is profoundly and agonisingly interesting in themselves.
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Self-Knowledge
Why We Become Unable to Protect Ourselves
There are people who, in most walks of life, are extremely canny and highly able to look after themselves. They…
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Relationships
Beware Those We Fall in Love With
The word ‘madness’ tends to bring to mind distinctly lurid and macabre associations: psychiatric wards, staring eyes, murder weapons, hideous…
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Self-Knowledge
Mental Illness and Love
When we speculate on the causes of mental illness, we typically imagine some form of chemical imbalance or damage to…
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Relationships
Two Emotional Skills That Save Relationships
Behind every relationship that endures, we can identify two ingredients. Firstly, an ability to break bad news well. Successful lovers…
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Relationships
The Psychology of Ghosting
We won’t get too far in the dating world without stumbling upon the melancholy phenomenon known as ghosting: someone we…
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Self-Knowledge
The Importance of Feeling Our Feelings
It’s a curious fact of our psychology that some of our greatest upsets come from not allowing ourselves to register…
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Relationships
How to Make Someone Fall in Love With You
There is something distinctly spooky in the idea that there might be a set route to making one person fall…
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Relationships
How Only the End Reveals the Truth About Our Partners
A central idea in the psychology of breakups is that there’s a peculiar and paradoxical way in which we can’t…
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