Psychology

At the age of 27, for the first time in my life, I worried that time was passing too fast. For the next few years, the speed with which most of my friends were getting married was the next source of concern.

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.

They say self-esteem is a vital ingredient for success in life. But what if everything we were taught about self-esteem is wrong?

Some psychologists fear that religion erodes self-esteem. Some believers fear that self-esteem endangers salvation. Who is right?

Next to family and health, friends are among the top reasons that make us happy. But what if we are solitary, recluse or shy?

"Marriage: a book of which the first chapter is written in poetry and the remaining chapters written in prose." (Beverley Nichols)

"I was wrong. I'm sorry"—these words can have a magical effect on a struggling relationship. But if we fail to show empathy, the apology will sound fake or hurt the offended person even more.

Many years ago, while I was still in high school, our Romanian language and literature teacher assigned us the task of writing a framed story, complete with characters and a plot of our choosing.

Aside from fuelling jokes about how women impose unrealistic standards on men, or how men are just grown-up children who want their wives to be their mothers, the expectations couples place on their relationship define how they relate to each other, and influence marital satisfaction.

Temperance was once upheld by philosophers, saints and stoics. In a world dominated by indulgence, its call to balance feels more relevant than ever.

In 2004, Frank Warren, an American businessman, had "a crazy idea," as he himself describes it. He printed 3,000 postcards, wrote his address on them and a series of instructions, then left space on the back for the sender to write secrets they had never shared with anyone before.

A lack of conflict is not necessarily a sign of spiritual maturity, as some Christians might be tempted to believe. The way in which we manage conflict says a lot about how we understand the role of grace, forgiveness and reconciliation in a sinful world.

From a distance, it looked like a simple picture of a tree: nothing very artistic—more of a sketch in subtle shades of brown and green. But as I looked closer I noticed something unusual. The tree had been constructed out of words and phrases. Someone had collected snippets of information about their family and their ancestors, and written it down to form the...

A word is dead when it is said, some say. I say it just begins to live that day. – Emily Dickinson

Henri Nouwen once wrote about some trapeze artists who became his friends, emphasising the perfect synchronicity between them and the total trust that the one who jumps has when he lets go of the trapeze and remains in the air for a second, waiting to be caught by his teammate. But what if, at the last moment, when it is too late to...