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Edited by Jill Wright,
Psychologists in research labs all over the world, and for that matter economists and other disciplines, are constantly asking people if they are happy. Generally what they think they are measuring is whether or not people are satisfied with their lives. The responses throw up some paradoxical issues for those who try to judge happiness on a global scale, because...
Edited by Jill Wright,
David Adam has a PhD in chemical engineering and works as a science writer and editor for Nature, but as he explains in a poignant confession in his former newspaper, The Guardian, he spent years tormented by Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. The article is an excerpt from Adam's book, The Man Who Couldn't Stop: OCD and the True Story of a...
Edited by Jill Wright,
It's probably fair to say that I am addicted to literary novels (and to reading them on an Amazon Kindle Paperwhite, which is so much easier to hold in bed at night, and doesn't require a reading light), but I maintain that they provide us with the most revealing insights into the human condition. I am often struck by the...
Edited by Jill Wright,
Have you ever noticed that feeling of satisfaction you get when you're telling people just how hectic your life is? Does it make you feel important? According to sociologists researching the phenomenon, somewhere around the end of the 20th Century, "busyness" became a badge of honour. People started competing to cram ever more demands into their schedules, and bragging about...
Edited by Jill Wright,
I've been following the work of Harvard psychologist Professor Ellen Langer for some time now. I was originally interested in her work with the ageing which she outlined in Counterclockwise. That book arose from what might best be described as an elaborate experiment in time travel. She took eight men in their 70s and 80s to a week-long retreat into...
Edited by Jill Wright,
I'm always fascinated by the random path to discovery that Google and the Web so often take us on. This week, for instance, I started reading a column by Mark Latham in the Financial Review on "right wing masochistic behaviour" - an amusing essay on what the former Labor leader describes as the victimhood mentality driving constant complaints and apparent...
Edited by Jill Wright,
One can't help but imagine that a lot of parents will be wondering if they really know what's going on with their youngsters as a result of the Sunday Age series on student mental health issues. The latest installment last weekend provided some alarming statistics drawn from a survey of almost 4700 students from Years 7 to 12. It found...
Edited by Jill Wright,
The roll call of big companies departing Victoria steadily increases. We don't yet know how many of the 5000 employees to be dismissed from Qantas will come from this State. But as the eddies begin to engulf smaller companies that supply them, hundreds of employees have already had a final, devastating meeting with the manager or HR department, or are...
Edited by Jill Wright,
I imagine that many psychologists will share my reaction to a Fairfax Media article exploring the background to the tragic suicide of former model and TV presenter, Charlotte Dawson. Headed, "Friends tried to save fragile Charlotte Dawson", it is, on many levels, profoundly disturbing. As one of the victim's friends told Fairfax, "There are so many of us that tried...
Edited by Jill Wright,
Having spent a couple of decades as a marriage and relationships counsellor - and possibly more to the point, many more years than that in a successful marriage - I am continually bemused by mass media snapshots of the latest trends and theories in the field. The Guardian, for instance, recently assured its readers that high divorce rates and low...