Dorothy Rowe

At present there is one crisis after another in the world, and one way or another, many of these crises creates a crisis in our own life. We can't help feeling anxious. What can we do?

We don't have any control over these crises. The government cuts a service we use, the food we buy costs more each week, and there is nothing we can do to prevent these things from happening. However, there is one thing we do have control over. This is how we interpret we interpret, that is, give a meaning to each crisis. Always, what we do decide to do is determined not by what has happened but how we have interpreted what has happened.

Regarding my chapter 'The Comforts of Unreason' in Living Together edited by David Kennard and Neil Small, Quartet Books, 1997.

The editors of Living Together invited a number of psychologists and therapists to contribute a chapter in response to their question, 'Could the knowledge and understanding gained through nearly a century of psychoanalytically informed work with individuals, families, groups and organisations be used to contribute to a practical agenda for social change that would increase our emotional health and well-being?'

When the mutual society Friends Provident became a public limited company in 2001, the Board set up a charitable foundation. In 2003 the foundation commissioned 17 people, of whom I was one, to write a chapter each for the book with the theme 'the right use of money'.  (Click here to read the full chapter.)

Stephen Hawkings set the cat amongst the defenders of religion when, in his new book The Grand Design he said that God was 'unnecessary'. He explained, 'Because there is a law such as gravity, the Universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the Universe exists, why we exist.' http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/7976594/Stephen-Hawking-God-was-not-needed-to-create-the-Universe.html No doubt he expected that the defenders of religion would be offended by this, and they were. Most people working in the media don't understand what the basic difference between religion and sciences is, but they know a good story when they see it. They immediately contacted those who would supply the kind of quote the media love.

If there is a special place in heaven for magazines that encouraged freedom of speech Openmind is on its way there. The next issue of Openmind will be its last. It will be replaced in May 2010 by, according to the Chief Executive of MIND, Paul Farmer, by a 'lively, engaging and thought-provoking magazine that will work alongside an interactive members' area of our website.' This will provide 'the dialogue between service users, professionals and providers so valued in the current publication.' Thus the one beacon of light in the murky world of the lies and misinformation in the psychiatric system will disappear. However, when historians come to research how thinking about severe mental distress has changed over the twentieth and early twenty-first century, the archives of Openmind will be a vital resource.

 . . . . . . and What Psychologists and Psychiatrists Don't Know. This is a lecture that I gave at the British Library on June 1, 2010.

I started thinking about writing a book about lying in those months when we were being told about the certain existence of Weapons of Mass Destruction. But, of course, in the years I was working as a clinical psychologist in the NHS I was dealing with lies all the time. There were the lies we tell when we want to defend a much-loved theory, such as, 'Depression is caused by a chemical imbalance.' And there were the lies my clients had been telling themselves since they were small children. The most common lie was, 'I am, in essence, bad and have to work hard to be good.' If you want to get depressed, this is the lie you need to tell yourself.

My two cataract operations are over and the soreness in my eyes have just about disappeared. In that time I've learnt a lot, little of which I had expected to learn.

I had planned to spend the week before the first operation resting and practising my relaxation technique for the operation. On the Sunday evening at the beginning of that week I went into the kitchen, switched on the light, and found a rat on the worktop. I have lived in this ground floor flat for 14 years and have never seen as much as a mouse in it. The next twelve days I spent leaping out of bed early so I could be ready for for when Tony from Rentokil arrived, and on other days for when Manuel the builder arrived to repair what Tony had needed to demolish and to block of every place where a rat might squeeze through. The first four days of these twelve days I spent sharing my home with the rat and trying to outwit this cunning, devious and ingenious creature. When there were no more signs of the rat, Tony waited a week before deciding that the rat had finally died from the massive amount of bait it had eaten. By the time I got to hospital I was so glad to have a chance to lie down.

In my post entitled The Death of a Great Little Magazine I said that Stephen Fry, 'became notorious for abandoning his role in a West End play and running away to France. However, he returned, confronted his demons, and since then he not only produced such magnificent work but he has become a National Treasure.' I was basing what I said on what the media had said about what Stephen was doing. Also, I had been watching his television programmes, and heard him speak at the Mind Award lunch where he had been given the Champion title. In my clinical work I have know a large number of people who had been plunged into the hideous whirlpool of anxiety, mania and depression but had managed to find something that had enabled them, not only to emerge from this experience, but to learn from it and become a much wiser person. It seemed to me that this is what Stephen had done.

For the last forty-odd years Barbara Ehrenreich has been inspecting aspects of American life with a mercilessly critical eye. Her latest book is published under different titles in different countries, but my copy, published in New York by Henry Holt and Company in 2009 is called Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America. Positive thinking and Positive Psychology are big business in the USA, and like all big businesses in America, Positive Psychology seeks to conquer the world.

Each year I avoid the worst of the English winter by spending those three months in Australia. The place has changed enormously since I lived there, but some things go on forever. When I arrive I am sure to find that the newspapers are covering a story or two about the goings-on of a dishonest business man or politician, and there is an account of someone being beaten up for reasons that might be linked to racism. Sometimes these attacks become major news stories. In 2005 there were the Cronulla riots, and in 2010 the attacks on Indian students in Melbourne.

Tanya Gold is a Guardian columnist whose style is trenchant criticism of the stupid, the self-deluded, and those who manipulate the truth for their own benefit. She also makes her readers laugh - well, most of them. Last September she turned her attention to the Pope's forthcoming visit to Britain in 2010.

No doubt Gold has views about the Catholic Church and what elevates one man to a position of great power, including the power of infallibility, but here she kept her views to herself. What interested her was one particular Pope, Pope Benedict XVI, formerly known as Joseph Ratzinger. When he arrives in Britain he will be afforded the greatest respect by all our leaders, none of whom will reprimand him or his church for acts that many people would regard as most reprehensible.

Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans on August 23, 2005. Three weeks later Naomi Klein, her husband Avi and her colleague Andrew drove around New Orleans to photograph the partially flooded city. As night fell they could not find their way out because none of the traffic lights worked, road signs were destroyed, and debris blocked the streets. They were involved in an accident, and Naomi found herself in an ambulance on her way to hospital. She hoped they were not heading to the partially flooded Charity Hospital where the staff struggled to look after their many patients without electricity or drugs.