Couch Surfing

Posted on by Jonathan Beckman

During the last fifty years the figure of the psychoanalyst in popular culture has plunged all the way from eminence to stock comedy. It is broadly accepted that humour is a means of expressing anger and fear without risking hostility, and that jokes allow us to regress momentarily into a childlike mode of cognition. So, […]

Caught in the Web

Posted on by Jonathan Beckman

In old-fashioned crime novels, the residents of a sleepy English village are occasionally scandalised by a spate of anonymous letters. It’s usually small stuff, about supposed affairs or minor financial transgressions, but the effect is devastating. In the modern world, it’s all much easier: no need to go to the bother of disguising handwriting or […]

The Lives of Others

Posted on by Jonathan Beckman

Far from the Tree is a big book and an important one. In ten chapters, dealing with the subjects of deafness, dwarfism, Down’s syndrome, autism, schizophrenia, disability, prodigies, children conceived through rape, children who commit crimes, and transgender children – framed by an autobiographical beginning and ending – Solomon investigates what it means for parents […]

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