First identified in 1982 by social scientists James Wilson and George Kelling, the broken windows theory suggests that broken windows that are not quickly repaired will encourage people to break more windows in the same neighbourhood. According to this theory, broken windows not only…
The French novelist Marcel Proust said, ‘It is in moments of illness that we are compelled to recognize that we live not alone but chained to a creature of a different kingdom: our body.’ Proust was making the point that only in illness do we become aware of our bodies. Through pain,…
Born on New Year’s Day, 1879, in a village a few miles from Swansea, Alfred Ernest Jones first encountered the work of Freud in 1905. He became intrigued by ‘a man in Vienna who actually listened with attention to every word his patients said to him.’ This approach was new to Jones, …
The first world war soldier’s pocket book contained, among other things, an informal will. These books were carried by all servicemen throughout the war. For many years, the last wills and testaments of nearly 300,000 soldiers who died in battle were left decaying and unpreserved in…
In his behavioural study written while at Harvard University, Karthik Narayanaswami explains how various forms of cognitive bias were used throughout the Nazi propaganda poster campaign to help perpetuate racism and hatred across Germany. It was only through this manipulation of the…
Born an only child in Glasgow in 1927, Ronald David Laing often claimed that his parents were psychologically ‘peculiar’. His father had a breakdown when Laing was in his teens. Laing studied medicine at the University of Glasgow but failed his exams in 1951 and had to re-sit these…
The Institute of Psychoanalysis has commissioned a short animated film that sets out to demonstrate the function and process of psychoanalysis. The patient, dressed in worried black, attempts to resolve a perceived issue with his boss. Using free association and dreams, the…
Sexual issues are common. Sex taps into many different parts of us: the emotional, the physical, the psychological and even the spiritual. The opportunity for something to go wrong in our sexual wiring is great. Most people will experience some kind of sexual dysfunction at some point in…
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross was born one of triplets in Zurich in 1926. About her early life in Zurich, she said in an interview, ‘In Switzerland I was educated in line with the basic premise: work work work. You are only a valuable human being if you work. This is utterly wrong. Half working, half dancing…
Katharine Briggs (1875 – 1968) had a life-long interest in human development and a particular interest in why people were different from each other. She witnessed differences in personality among the people around her and began formulating her own theories around the causes of…
