"Doctors came to see her singly and in consultation, talked much in French, German, and Latin, blamed one another, and prescribed a great variety of medicines for all the diseases known to them, but the simple idea never occurred to any of them that they could not know the disease Natasha was suffering from, as no disease suffered by a live man can be known, for every living person has his own peculiarities and always has his own peculiar, personal, novel, complicated disease, unknown to medicine. "


Posts tagged with 'parents'

Assessing attachment in adults

18th October 2009

I'm a doctor and psychotherapist who's interested in using attachment ideas to improve how helpful I can be for clients. Awareness of attachment issues informs therapy, it doesn't dictate it. An obvious question is whether it's sometimes worth assessing attachment in a "formal" way. I'm no expert in this area. …

Recent research: six papers with broad social implications – inequality, health insurance, spanking, bullying, and religion

15th October 2009

Here are half a dozen recent research papers with broad social implications (all details & abstracts to these studies are given further down this blog posting). Kay and colleagues publish on "Inequality, discrimination, and the power of the status quo: Direct evidence for a motivation to see the way things …

NHS LifeCheck: online health checks for three age groups - babies, teens & mid-life

11th October 2009

People who have visited this blog a fair amount will know that I'm a huge fan of healthy lifestyle. It's a no-brainer. I've talked about this in Does healthy lifestyle really make a difference?, Common sense isn't common, Would you like to be 14 years younger - it's largely a …

Some great attachment websites

4th October 2009

Last week I wrote about "A couple of fine books on attachment". Today I want to highlight what a fantastic resource the internet is - below are details of half a dozen websites that offer lots of attachment information, and also details of further websites that are helpful but more …

A couple of fine, recent books on attachment

27th September 2009

I wrote earlier this month on "Attachment, compassion & relationships". I've been aware of John Bowlby's work on adult-child attachment for many years but, when I've approached it for insights that might help in my work as a psychotherapist, I've been put off by the complexity of assessment methods and …

Attachment, compassion & relationships

6th September 2009

Well I didn't sleep too well last night. Catero, my wife, and I went to the cinema yesterday evening and watched "500 Days of Summer" . I enjoyed it and it got me thinking about relationships. The "Summer" of the title is a woman who doesn't believe in romantic love. …

Recent research: six studies on the long-term effects of abuse & deprivation

20th August 2009

Here are half a dozen studies on the long-term effects of various forms of abuse & deprivation. Paras et al systematically reviewed the association between a history of sexual abuse and a lifetime diagnosis of a somatic disorder. They found significant links with functional gastrointestinal disorders, nonspecific chronic pain, psychogenic …

Recent research: six papers relevant to psychotherapy

28th May 2009

Here are six studies relevant to improving psychotherapy outcomes. Brewin et al report on using imagery-based interventions to help people with depressioin. Lydiard et al highlight the importance of sleep-related disturbances as a treatment target in PTSD. McCrady and colleagues show that working with couples rather than just individuals seems …

Recent research: five papers on childhood trauma, parenting & health in adulthood

12th March 2009

Here are five papers on childhood, the effects childhood experience can have on adulthood, and the effects adults may then have on their own children. The first paper by Brody et al. is the encouraging one. It demonstrates how caring parenting can combat genetic vulnerability - "involved-supportive" mothering greatly reduced …

Recent research: a mixed bag of six papers on anxiety

19th February 2009

Here are half a dozen papers with anxiety relevance. The first couple are about the interaction between genetic vulnerability (or resilience) and childhood experience. The Stevens et al paper is an update on the large body of research looking at psychological genetic vulnerability/resilience in macaque monkeys and how this interacts …