What motivates you? One of the finest discoveries of that lump of unnecessary reflection, that social psychology was in the 1950s, is Bandura’s concept of ‘self-efficacy’. Of course the concept had a history in less flashy theory and experimental work – on regulation of behaviour and so on – but Bandura has always made his … More Engagement trumps motivation

What positive emotion do you feel most often? Our culture is a strange one. It tends to fear emotion, or at least the expression or display of emotion. It prefers to see ‘affect’ as psychologists dub it as an unnecessary excrescence or a survival from a more primitive state of human development either as a … More The fallacies of binary evaluations of emotion.

Create an emergency preparedness plan. Since nothing lasts but constant change be mindful still that the few chances for stasis range, except the pill that ends all, from nought to zero because body so wants to be its own hero never sorry For trailing mind through witless pain Defying hearts, Clear that cold flesh will … More For Joanne

What brings you peace? We tend as a culture to fetishise a notion of inner peace, precisely because we live in a world in which both what is good, bad or on some scale between them, are of necessity the product of a dialectic that is necessarily based on conflict. We feel that we have … More Peace in pieces: how searching for and overvaluing peace will always evade it.

What profession do you admire most and why? It is very difficult to admire a profession. Not least because some of the most undesirable aspects of some professions are those characteristics that are most usually given the name ‘professional’. It usually indicates taking a back seat on one’s own emotions or instincts and being driven … More It is still for me the ideal of social work that is most admirable in public life. But is public life itself doomed?

What is the most important thing to carry with you all the time? When I worked as an advisor on anxiety and depression in primary health care, people of all ages would claim that they would never go anywhere without their mobile (and I suppose the same may be said of cell phones in the … More Is my ‘Mobile phone’ the default answer to this prompt? Let’s not choose that, travel light and be truly mobile!