Psychotherapist Phillip Hodson wonders why rough sex is so exciting The Times – January 31st 2004 If he hadn’t died 65 years ago, Freud would be fascinated by our current ambivalence towards sexual violence. On the one hand, we quite rightly anathematise the crime of assault....
Published The Times January 5th 2004 YOU think that was the season of goodwill? Wrong. Christmas is in fact a longrunning experiment in human stress psychology. Already knackered from work, we do domestic overtime. Toiling with decorations, stalking the perfect gift, foraging for exotic foodstuffs, we then, without...
Published in The Times January 5th 2004 TICK YOUR two likeliest answers to each question: 1. You are travelling to the Caribbean for Christmas complete with au pair and kids. You are about to get on the Gatwick train when you are told that an unofficial strike has disrupted...
There’s only one diet that works – Sigmund’s Published in The Times – January 3rd 2004 This is not an essay on 19th century Jewish cookery. Besides, Sigmund Freud only got stick-thin by chain-smoking foul cheroots. My aim instead is to extend your life and enrich your...
If diets are ‘for the thick who are tired of it’ (as a Times leader recently claimed) which dieting option would suit your personality? Published in The Times January 3rd 2004 1 – Slimming Club This is a reliable diet for sociable extroverts. Those who would love...
Psychotherapist Phillip Hodson considers the wider perils of the therapeutic hug The Times - 6th December 2003 Up to 12 New York firemen face divorce because they have fallen in love with widows of comrades slaughtered in the Twin Towers. Following a century’s old ‘liaison’ tradition in their Department,...
Published in The Times – October 25th 2003 Their collective ages add up to 275. But official wisdom makes them forever young ‘because they are in politics’. They bounce about like a quintet of Mick Jaggers. For their respective parties, they live and breathe the air of novelty...
Published The Times September 27th 2003 A wise old psychiatrist once said to me that a parent’s place is in the wrong. Nowadays, I fear a parent’s place is in the dark. It doesn’t take too many Internet horror stories like that of 12-year-old Shevaun Pennington...
Something’s happening in the nation’s psyche and the website Friends Reunited (which allows school contemporaries to get back in touch with each other) is responsible… Published The Times September 13th 2003 Current trends show that Friends Reunited is the fastest-growing and largest organisation in Britain. Fifteen per...
The New Statesman - 21st July 2003 I've worked as a psychotherapist for over 20 years. In that time, there haven't been too many traumas, apart from the day I fell off my own chair and had to re-interpret my position. But there have been ample traumas about...