Dedicated to my dear friend, Joanne. The world of the mind and mental health self-care is plagued by binary thinking – none more disturbing than the trend named positive psychology. This school of psychology claims to aim at optimising human happiness by addressing negativity in feeling, thought and action and, in particular, by reducing what … More The fallacy of positive psychology

‘Confidence ‘ is a word that must seem to have the most straightforward of etymologies, where notions of faith and trust derive straight from the Latin (and we are told Old French) to engineer the fact that it as about belief and trust. In brief, you can do things WITH (con-) FAITH (-fides)  in another … More Meet the confidence man!?!

I have barely known but one Autolycus in my life, other than him who Shakespeare sung, then dubbed in prose: My traffic is sheets; when the kite builds, look to lesser linen. My father named me Autolycus; who being, as I am, littered under Mercury, was likewise a snapper-up of unconsidered trifles. With die and … More Singing a song for Autolycus

Autofictions are fictional life stories that look like an autobiography and have autobiographical elements from the author but are told about the life of a fictional character. Some openings of both autobiographies and autofictions are a kind of closure as well as an opening. They assume a summing up of self in some take on, … More ‘Why write me up’, said life to me: ‘I haven’t done with you yet’.

Despite the puffy face and the sustained pain of the consequences of that wisdom tooth extraction on Monday, I just had to see Andrew Macmillan read from his novel ‘Pity‘. I blogged on his novel soon after it came out [see this link], even though the Bounds Bookshop at Whitley Bay is a long journey … More I learned that to hear the voice of some people you love for their writing is a joy.

The Three Fates: Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos, 1558-59. After Giulio Romano. Artist Giorgio Ghisi. (Heritage Art/Heritage Images via Getty Images) Available at: https://historydaily.org/three-fates-greek-mythology This is a deceptive prompt question. It pretends to be about whether the respondents believes in the ‘existence’ of ‘fate/destiny’, in the same way one might ask whether one BELIEVES in GOD, … More If there were a ‘fate’ or ‘destiny’ in our lives, would it matter if we believed in it or not?