Tag: Mind and Psychology

For Robert Jay Lifton, treating veterans’ trauma was an antiwar tool. How did PTSD, the diagnosis he helped create, come to accommodate state violence?

Long decried by liberals and conservatives alike, the Martinican psychiatrist remains one of the most piercing critics of colonialism.

Generative AI has made it possible to create lifelike models of real people. Should we?

Within the next decade, we may well have systems that are serious candidates for consciousness.

In Foolproof, psychologist Sander van der Linden compares misinformation to viral infection—and claims to have a vaccine. 

My son’s violent illness humbled my sense of control and transformed my understanding of what it means to parent.

Epiphanies can prompt us to view the world differently, a new book contends. But they are no substitute for ethical and political debate.

The gender politics of Positive Psychology valorize the nuclear family and heterosexual monogamy.

Decades of biological research haven't improved diagnosis or treatment. We should look to society, not to the brain.

The Judge Rotenberg Center, a Massachusetts school, still uses electric shock therapy to punish disabled students. How can an entire field of mental health accept this?

How philosophical thinking can make truthfulness possible even when the truth can barely be fathomed.

This summer, an intelligence report and a new Harvard research project have renewed the public’s interest in UFOs. But neither is likely to change many minds.

Trump is only the latest to exploit it. A new path forward must address the structures that sustain it.

Adhering to a particular sexual or gender identity may mean abandoning the things that make us most unique.

Allured by the promise of Big Data, science has shortchanged causal explanation in favor of data-driven prediction. But ultimately we must ask why.

What constitutes a good death? On end-of-life care and assisted suicide.

Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman transformed how we think about economics and human behavior.

Protest is not merely a matter of personal awakening, but of organizing and mobilizing the power needed to change social relations.

A stunning trove of letters from Elizabeth Bishop to her therapist sheds light on the personal secrets that shaped her poetry.