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  • Article

Louis Wain’s cryptic cats

| Bryony Benge-Abbott

Once famous for his quirky cat illustrations, today Louis Wain is often portrayed as a ‘psychotic’ artist whose illness can be mapped out through his drawings. Here Bryony Benge-Abbott takes a more rounded view.

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Do good mothers make good democracy?

| Charlie WilliamsSarah MarksDaniel Pick

To be psychologically fit for democracy, one distinguished paediatrician argued that you need a ‘good enough mother’ – and that we must acknowledge the bad side of our feelings.

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The building as tool of healing

| Emily Sargent

When we’re ill, it’s not just medical care that helps to treat us. Architects have discovered that the right environment can play an important part too.

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Can isolation lead to manipulation?

| Charlie WilliamsSarah MarksDaniel Pick

Military-funded researchers wanted to know if isolation techniques could facilitate brainwashing. One neuroscientist suggested that it might improve our own control over our minds.

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Silent threat

| Vanessa PetersonMichael Salu

As Vanessa Peterson recovered from a frighteningly serious illness, she wondered whether it was linked to air quality. For many communities, she found, pollution is a political issue.

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The psychological impact of nuclear war

| Taras Young

How would you hold up psychologically if a nuclear bomb was dropped? Discover the British government’s secret predictions from the 1980s.

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Native Americans and the dehumanising force of the photograph

| Allison C Meier

In the second part of Native Americans through the 19th-century lens, we delve deeper into the ambivalent messages within the images.

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Can our sexual desires be transformed?

| Charlie WilliamsSarah MarksDaniel Pick

In the 1950s, many psychiatrists thought that homosexuality could be reformed. One found that it couldn’t – and his discoveries led to a change in the law.

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The anatomy of a brain dissection

| Moheb CostandiBenjamin Gilbert

Dissecting the brain after death not only helps confirm a diagnosis, but it can also teach us so much more about the symptoms and causes of brain diseases and how to treat them.

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Rethinking the placebo effect

| Anjuli SharmaSteven Pocock

The placebo effect has long been harnessed for both legitimate and fraudulent use, but we’re only just discovering how and why our bodies respond positively to dummy drugs, as Anjuli Sharma reveals.