Articles

'Don't lose your sense of humour, you'll need it': How to get through a mid-life crisis

'Don't lose your sense of humour, you'll need it': How to get through a mid-life crisis   Middle age is not what it used to be.  We are now in the era of the hundred-year life. But that stretching of the life course also means that each stage of adult life now starts later and lasts longer.   Most of you don’t consider yourself... Read More

Posted: 17 November 2019

Divorce, Irish style: The wait just adds to the heartbreak

Divorce, Irish style: The wait just adds to the heartbreak When a long-term relationship fails, physical and mental health suffers enormously Sat, May 11, 2019 Once again, Ireland[https://www.irishtimes.com/news] is going to the polls about divorce – this time, to decide if separating couples have to wait for four years to be granted a divorce, as is currently the law; or whether this should be reduced... Read More

Posted: 31 May 2019

Why and how do we fall in love?

*What is this thing called love?* We can live without St Valentine’s Day. But we can’t survive without love, because love is nested in the need for closeness that is wired into the deep structure of the human psyche. When that need is thwarted, we are beset by loneliness and rejection, blocked, adrift, stagnating in our lives. When we have love, we... Read More

Posted: 10 February 2018

Creativity

Creative Ireland In 1970s, in a now famous experiment, psychologists observed children aged 3-5 as they played spontaneously and identified those who most liked drawing. A few weeks later, the psychologists returned and asked those children to draw a picture. They divided the children into three groups. The first group were promised an award when they had finished the drawing. The... Read More

Posted: 13 December 2017

The glue that holds a society together

Thomas Hobbes’ social contract may seem a long way from the fraught issue of how unpaid water charges will be handled.  Yet, it’s right at the heart of the dilemma facing us.  When any group try to organise their lives collectively, the first job is to agree a social contract: what contribution is needed from each member to make the... Read More

Posted: 21 December 2016

How Ireland legalised divorce… eventually

For anyone under 30, the 1995 Divorce Referendum is ancient history. Anyone over 40 still can't quite believe it’s 21 years ago.  For those over 50, it’s forever linked with the earlier Divorce Referendum in 1986, and before that the 1983 Pro-Life Amendment, because that’s when the story began.   Best not to linger on just how bleak the 1980s were in... Read More

Posted: 22 May 2016