Articles on Self-Knowledge, Relationships and Calm - The School of Life

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Mature Love

Why You Can’t Read Your Partner’s Mind

In relationships, whatever our professed scepticism, we very frequently proceed as if mind reading were not only possible but a standard requirement and possibility in love.

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Finding Love

The Importance of Being Single

There is no better guarantee of a successful relationship than knowing that we could — and can — manage perfectly well on our own.

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Romanticism

Kierkegaard on Love

Kierkegaard insisted that through concentrating on Romantic love, we develop a narrow and impoverished sense of what love can actually be.

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Behaviours

Charles Darwin and The Descent of Man

Charles Darwin teaches us to feel compassion for the very large primitive part of who we all are.

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  • Sociability
  • Friendship

Why Misfits Make Great Friends

Once we have given up on the poisonous goal of respectability, we will at last be ready for friendship.
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  • Relationships
  • Sex

What Freud’s Oedipus Complex Can Teach Us

We might think of the Oedipus Complex as offering us a guiding narrative about how we come, through the varied experiences of childhood, to have our own distinctive approach to sexuality.
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  • Leisure
  • Art/Architecture

How Industry Restores Our Faith in Humanity

There is every reason to be appalled by our race. But to retain a vestige of hope, we should look at our docksides and warehouses, our flyovers and radar stations.
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Emotional Skills

Giving Up on People Pleasing

The people pleaser needs to learn an unusual and little-mentioned art: that of giving up on people.

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Kierkegaard on Love

Relationships

Kierkegaard on Love

One of the most provocative analyses of love ever produced is to be found in the writings of the Danish…
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A Portrait of Tenderness

Relationships

A Portrait of Tenderness

There’s a story going on, a very lovely one, but we can’t know the details for certain. In this respect,…
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