I do love a good TED talk, and this recent talk from Tim Harford was very illuminating for me. Put simply, Harford’s proposal is that humans suffer from the god complex – the tendency to believe that we know in advance exactly how a complex system works, and therefore can design a perfect solution on paper. [...]

It’s well worth reading Simon Baron-Cohen’s recent article on empathy in the Guardian. In essence, he argues that describing people as evil doesn’t do anything to explain why they behave as they do. It also doesn’t offer us much in the way of a solution. So he suggests instead that we should think of ‘evil’ people [...]

I always enjoy watching Derren Brown at work, and last night’s Miracles For Sale was certainly enjoyable. It took a simple premise – could Derren show that faith healers are fake by taking an ordinary person and teaching them to perform ‘healing miracles’ on a group of unsuspecting Americans? The straightforward, and inevitable, answer was [...]

The what? The non-deceptive mega placebo! Yes, today it’s the joy of  ’stuff that makes you better just because you think it will.’ Placebos are fascinating things. A placebo is officially “a substance or procedure… that is objectively without specific activity for the condition being treated”. In other words, a substance that doesn’t do anything. [...]

One of the unfortunate things about being a hypnotherapist is that many people have a rather negative perception of what you do. As I’ve said many times before, the public perception of hypnosis is rooted in the mid-90s when Paul McKenna’s shows were on TV. The result is that hypnosis is generally associated with hilarious [...]

I often find studies into workplace behaviour, like this one into workplace anger, both interesting and rather sad. Essentially, the research describes how simply punishing employees for getting angry at work isn’t very effective. Apparently, if management takes ”an active interest in addressing underlying issues that prompted employee anger” then  ”perceptions of improved situations increase significantly.” [...]

This week is Depression Awareness Week, a valuable campaign run every year by the charity Depression Alliance. One of the aims is simply to make people more aware of depression and its symptoms. According to the charity: “As a general rule, if you have experienced four or more of these symptoms, for most of the day [...]

There is a fascinating and disturbing survey result that it’s well worth exploring. The survey was conducted among 1,008 randomly selected American adults by the Public Religion Research Institute. It focused on exploring their attitudes to God, and God’s role in natural disasters. The main results were as follows: 70% of respondents believed God is [...]

Who would you expect to be more prone to problems with their mental health – the unemployed or those in full-time work? It makes sense that the unemployed would have more problems. After all, work can give us dignity, a sense of purpose and, quite importantly, money. All of these things contribute to meeting a [...]

It is common for many hypnotherapists to present what they do as a form of therapy unique and distinct from other types. In the most extreme cases, this unfortunately means presenting it as distinct from psychotherapy as a whole, and classifying hypnotherapy – erroneously in my view – as a form of complimentary or alternative [...]