Does it matter if you attach descriptive labels to others? In an experiment it was shown (Bandura A, 1975) that individuals behaved differently towards others if different labels were attached. The operators were asked to help students from another college … Continue reading →
Matching and mis-matching Human beings have the ability to recognise patterns and hence discern similarities and differences. In medicine there are agreed templates describing collections of symptoms and signs. These define diseases and mental illnesses such as in the Diagnostic … Continue reading →
Feminist Therapy Types of therapy are generally characterised and differentiated by reference to their theoretical perspectives on the one hand or their methodologies on the other. So psychoanalysis is differentiated from behavioural therapy by reference to the theory of the … Continue reading →
Werner v Landau This is a cautionary tail for psychotherapists This was a case brought by Miss Alice Landau against Dr Theodor Werner concerning 24 sessions of psychotherapy which took place between March and August 1949 and during the resumption … Continue reading →
Andreas Lubitz and Stigmatizing Mental Health Problems Over the past several days we have heard more and more salacious speculation regarding the mental state of Adreas Lubitz and how this may have been a contributing factor in the recent airline … Continue reading →
Training Hypnotherapists As I write this blog, I am also preparing to begin a new London Certificate in Hypno-Psychotherapy course for the National College of Hypnosis and Psychotherapy. This got me to thinking, I began training hypnotherapists in 1993, and … Continue reading →
Mental Illness When physicians conceptualise medical illnesses there are usually tests available which can confirm or refute the diagnosis. These include laboratory tests, imaging or genetic markers in order to confirm impressions formed following physical examination of the patient in … Continue reading →
Types of Schizophrenia The word comes from the Greek, ‘split mind’, hence arises a common misconception that schizophrenia refers to a Jekyll and Hyde character, or the ‘Multiple Personality Disorder’. This is not so. It was Bleuler, a German psychiatrist, … Continue reading →
Bipolar Disorder It is usually during the manic phase of this illness that an individual has an acute need for treatment, and initially anti-psychotic drugs will be prescribed which often reduce the mania within twenty four hours. Then maintenance therapy … Continue reading →
Ethics of Stage Hypnosis Stage hypnosis is also commonly referred to as comedy hypnosis. Participants are volunteers and they enter the scenario knowing that they will be asked to perform silly tasks for entertainment purposes. Before stage hypnosis begins, many … Continue reading →
