therapy
How can a biography of Woody Allen be so unbearably dull?
Only after 300-plus pages of tedious filmography do we finally get to the rift with Mia Farrow and the family scandals that have dogged Allen ever since
Then they came for therapy
Were I to overcome a lifelong scepticism about the healing powers of talk therapy, I imagine languishing on a psychiatrist’s…
Tales from the hen house
Their jostling energy and distinct personalities bring joy not only to their owners but increasingly to children in therapy and lonely pensioners in care homes
Nattery and nice
Have you ever taken a piece of advice? I’m not asking a rhetorical question. Have you ever once in your…
Shrinking feeling
Let’s leave mental health diagnoses to the professionals
Weighty matters
This is a novel about ‘mommy issues’. Rachel is a Reform Jew, ‘more Chanel bag Jew than Torah Jew’, and…
Middle-aged thrills
Beth, the protagonist of Joanna Briscoe’s The Seduction, reminded me of Clare in Tessa Hadley’s debut, Accidents in the Home.…
Taking pride in household chores really can ease depression
There are many books about what it’s like to live with mental illness and the aftermath of child sexual abuse.…
For some girls, therapy does more harm than good
In the churchyard by the church near my grandmother’s house, there’s a tombstone with an inscription that’s haunted me since…
A legend in her own time
I usually dread the final 15 minutes of a celebrity interview: the awkward section during which the writer must steer…
Forgive me, Father
What Catholics really talk about in the confession box
The healing art
In calling their book Art as Therapy Alain de Botton and John Armstrong have taken the direct route. They’re not…
Dear Mary
Q. One of our daughter’s godmothers has given very generous presents but never with any regularity. She was unable to…
