Psychology

Sleep is perhaps the most important, complicated, and misunderstood physiological mechanism that keeps us alive.

Critical thinking is not a cure-all, but it proves very useful in dealing with, clarifying, and solving some decision-making problems, as well as the thought and belief disputes which occupy our minds.

Five decades ago, when the World Organization for Social Psychiatry was established, many thought it was a joke. Others, being more analytical, tried to prove that mental illness can only be an individual experience; that the problem always exists only in an individual and never in a group.

Little over a decade ago, a highly acclaimed British documentary filmmaker, Louis Theroux, stepped into the midst of 500 paedophiles admitted to the psychiatric hospital in Coalinga, California, trying to find out if the complex treatment the convicts had to go through was really working.

Hope can be palpable and elusive at the same time, both reasonable and independent of logic. Yet this independence from logic is not synonymous with indifference to reason, but a victory over it. Hope has its own logic, one that changes lives for the better.

We often treat burnout syndrome as a diagnostic fad. In reality, overworking has become the norm, and its consequences are serious enough to urge us to identify the best strategies to prevent it.

What we think about ourselves, over time, becomes our reality. This is a good enough reason to identify thinking errors left running in the background and to seek out strategies for healthier thinking.

The TV-series Friends was recently reviewed in The New York Times as “enormously easy to watch”. This characteristic however does not make the show unique, nor can it account for its popularity today, more than 15 years since its final episode.

If shame were personified, its main characteristic would be its ability to creep into the darkest depths, avoiding any trace of light and any discussion of itself.

“Mister Watson, come here, I want to see you.” With this message, Alexander Graham Bell and his assistant, Thomas Watson, launched the telephone. The door had opened to distant, personal and instant contact.

Let him that would move the world first move himself. – Socrates

Change is the only constant in life, especially the kind that comes unexpectedly and makes us believe that we cannot give in to it without giving up on ourselves, or turning into something we are not.

I was there, I saw him. He was coming towards me mechanically, impassively, coldly. He suddenly stopped in front of me and waited for me to speak. For a moment, I froze. He was tall, thin, his face oval and his eyes blue, slightly sunken under his eyelids. I had met such people before, but there was something special about him.

It is important to have a purpose in life, yet this is not enough. It really matters what your purpose is.

While the form and content of books may evolve, their essence and function will remain unchanged—“the book will remain what it is”. This is the view expressed by renowned literary figures Jean-Claude Carrière and Umberto Eco in their 2009 dialogue series titled This is Not the End of the Book.