Psychology

"If there is anything more heartbreaking than a body perishing for lack of bread, it is a soul which is dying from hunger for the light." (Victor Hugo)

There has been an increase in the number of so-called "experts" in an increasing number of so-called "fields". It seems that all of life has been divided into neatly-marketable industries. No wonder then that the arrival of a new expert in something familiar to mankind for ages, is met with caution. In the case of Julia Samuel's expertise in the field of grief...

What do you do when things go wrong and everything around you seems to crumble? Do you keep your eyes forward and try to find a solution? Or do you fall into endless complaining?

How can we protect ourselves against expecting too much of our friendships? Can we do something to prepare for the disappointment? And what does one do to deal with it?

At some point, we've all come across the phrase "back in my day," a deeply subjective expression which encapsulates a universal phenomenon: the generation gap.

Some say that of all the opinions we can have in life, the most important is the opinion about ourselves.

Lace-edged rumours wafted through the student campus in Sagunto, Spain: Devin, one of the American boys who had come to Spain for a year of study, was dating Teresa, a second-year theology student who was hard to miss. Her striking beauty and cheerful nature attracted gazes like a magnet. No one suspected then, not even the protagonists of this relationship, that their love...

Responsible, achievement-oriented and highly principled – this is what a brief portrait of a perfectionist child looks like, explaining why, up to a certain point, this is the kind of child most parents dream of.

Love stories have a way of creeping into the foreground and convincing us that their effervescent debut is just the overture to a marriage that will always rekindle, in a different intensity, the same fireworks of beginnings.

"Millions of ordinary, psychologically normal people will face an abrupt collision with the future. Citizens of the world's richest and most technologically advanced nations, many of them will find it increasingly painful to keep up with the incessant demand for change that characterises our time." (Alvin Toffler, Future Shock, 1970)

In the February 2023 issue of Signs of the Times, I wrote an article titled Gambling’s Dark Underbelly. Here in Australia, gambling is a multi-billion-dollar industry with a few very rich winners and millions of losers. In the article I concluded that “Gambling in any form is designed to bleed you for as long as you’re willing to bleed, with no regard for...

Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer. – Rainer Maria Rilke

What would you say if you read an article that tells you that the human ability to make choices freely and consciously—that is, free will—might just be an illusion? What if the article backs up its claims with scientific research? Such curiosity is sparked by an article published on livescience.com.

We are leaving. Even if we were not supposed to, we chose to and it is happening. We are moving again. It is the eighth time in eleven years of marriage.

“No doubt equality of goods is just; but, being unable to cause might to obey justice, men have made it just to obey might. Unable to strengthen justice, they have justified might; so that the just and the strong should unite, and there should be peace, which is the sovereign good....” (Blaise Pascal, Thoughts)