4th May 2006 A brilliant article by Magnus Linklater in The Times (3/5/06) on Cognitive Behaviour Therapy... >>Freud-lite: the ideal modern cure Magnus Linklater “WHAT PROGRESS we are making!” said Sigmund Freud. “In the Middle Ages they would have burned me. Now they are content with burning my books.” You were overoptimistic, I fear, Dr …
Category: politics
Let Us Praise Negativity (OP)
I was in some doubt whether to reproduce this post as it is one area in which my experiences have, to some extent, modified my perceptions. Certainly I have come to have a different view of the Positive Mental Health Group, or more accurately its members and the work they did. On the other hand …
Xmas Stuff (OP)
21st December 2007 I am always ambivalent in my attitude to Xmas. For me personally, as probably for most depressives, it is a difficult time because it demands jollity, cheerfulness and increased social interaction. I am often ill at Xmas ; indeed one year was spent in hospital. I must have been bad because they …
Marianne, Lucy Jordan and Lizzie Eustace (OP)
26th June 2007 A superb South Bank show documentary on Marianne Faithfull; film from a recent concert, and a couple of interviews, the main one being conducted by Bragg (not a favourite of mine, but I must admit this was a good, fairly self-effacing interview). All the main events were covered - the discovery, As …
Continue reading Marianne, Lucy Jordan and Lizzie Eustace (OP)
Work, work, work (OP)
15th August 2007 Peter Linebaugh in The London Hanged (p14) writes... >>new morality became triumphant among the capitalist class at the end of the seventeenth century. Christopher Hill contrasted it with the religious attitudes prevailing earlier: 'Labour, the curse of fallen man, had become a religious duty, a means of glorifying God in our calling. …
December Miscellany (2009)
December, as may be surmised from the comparative paucity of blog entries, was not a good month. This should come as no surprise to me as it is, with January, one of the two worst average months. Although this might indicate some form of Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) this is not so as February is one of the …
Three Courtesans
By one of those strange co-incidences in the course of six days we saw three very different productions, in three different art forms (theatre, cinema and opera), in all of which courtesans were the central characters. This was certainly completely unplanned, but provides the chance for a blog which includes some reflections on the whole …
Berlin on Turgenev
In 1970 Isaiah Berlin delivered the Romanes Lecture in Oxford under the title 'Fathers and Children - Turgenev and the Liberal Predicament' ; the text is contained in the 1975 Penguin edition of Fathers and Sons. It is deeply fascinating not only for the insights which it gives into Turgenev, a man whom Berlin found …
Goldsmith’s Traveller
On the EighteenthCenturyWorlds List ( see right for link) Ellen recently posted some verses from Goldsmith's The Traveller..... Goldsmith, from "The Traveller" Creations' mildest charms are there combined, Extremes are only in the master's mind. Stern o'er each bosom reason holds her state, With daring aims irregularly great; Pride in their port, defiance in their …
Reeves on Mill – Chapters 1-5
The following are my comments on Richard Reeves biography John Stuart Mill Victorian Firebrand (2007) taken directly from my comments on Trollope-l - some of the remarks therefore refer to debates on list but these are pertinent so I have refrained from any editing. Chapters 1 and 2 I have now started Richard …
Moving Toyshop 