Here is a transcript of my recent podcast with the Norwegian ME Association. In the interview, we discuss the medical stigma where post-viral illnesses, such as ME and Long COVID, are falsely characterised as ‘psychological’ due to poorly grounded stereotyping. The discussion touches on how medical opinion has become intertwined […]
Tag: psychology
ME, Long Covid, and the History of Medical Stigma (Podcast)
I recently had the pleasure of talking with the folks at the Norwegian ME Association for their (excellently produced) podcast series. Arising from my new book, we discussed the medical stigma in which an illness is falsely characterised as ‘psychological’ — post-viral conditions such as ME and Long Covid, for […]
Why are transphobes so transphobic?
As a straight, white, middle-aged, college-educated, settled-community, cisgender man, I know that I benefit from more than my fair share of privilege. So if I have found Pride Month somewhat stressful, I can only imagine how others must have felt. Pride Month just isn’t what it used to be. What […]
Medical haste, COVID-19, and the mythology of “Medically Unexplained Symptoms”
Here is an extract from a lecture I gave last year for my colleagues at the Psychiatric Association of Turkey. It concerns the issue of so-called “Medically Unexplained Symptoms”: I attempt to show how the primacy effect — a reliance on first impressions — serves to distort medical reasoning. For […]
Psychology, religion, and public policy
Hello! I hope your Saturday is going well. Here is a talk I gave in November, at the Psychological Society of Ireland’s annual conference. The transcript appears below. Enjoy! * * * * * * Transcript: Psychology, religion, and public policy Now, this particular topic is very wide-ranging. I wouldn’t […]
“The problem may well be that some of our treatments are too evidence based”
Whether to laugh or to cry, truly that is the question. Professors of psychology can be a strange breed. While some are blind to their own faults, others are are obsessively self-critical. Perhaps this is why the field of psychology has been described as being “in crisis” since (at least) […]