- Article
- Article
Can isolation lead to manipulation?
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.
- Article
- Article
How do advertisers get inside our heads?
Vance Packard exposed techniques of mass manipulation developed by 1950s advertisers that are still at work today in the age of big data.
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- Article
Can our minds be taken hostage?
It’s not unusual for captives to end up feeling strong bonds with their captors. But is it a matter of submission or survival?
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- Article
Can our sexual desires be transformed?
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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- Article
Do good mothers make good democracy?
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.
- Book extract
- Book extract
Your gut’s instincts
Cultural historian Elsa Richardson explores the stomach’s influence over our emotions, and why trusting your gut is often good advice.
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- Article
How electromagnetic therapy inspired me
Poet Sarah James explores how repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation treated her depression and influenced her art.
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- Article
The epilepsy diagnosis
Epilepsy exists between the mind and body, something that Aparna Nair experienced for herself when she was diagnosed as a teenager.
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- Article
Female masturbation and the perils of pleasure
Dr Kate Lister exposes the brutal 19th-century ‘cures’ for women who indulged in masturbation.
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- Article
Cocaine, the Victorian wonder drug
Today, cocaine has a very poor public image as one of the causes of crime and violence. But for the Victorians it was welcomed as the saviour of modern surgery.
- Article
- Article
Illuminated manuscripts, illuminating medicines
From rare bugs to exorbitantly priced plant parts, find out more about the artistic and medical uses of pigments from the past.
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- Article
Pain and the power of touch
As a new physiotherapist, Fiona Murphy quickly learned that her patients’ pain was unpredictable and very personal. But using the right words became the key to helping them.