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The Unwatched Years - Social Media and Childhood...(18.6.26)

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And so… the government is going to ban under-16s from the main social media platforms. The reaction has been about what I would expect. Plenty of privacy concerns about age verification (which I share). Worries about state authority over digital life (very much shared). Scepticism about whether teenagers will simply find workarounds (many will). Parents' groups split. The tech companies issue statements about safety while lobbying against any specific measure that would reduce their reach. Of course these are all valid concerns. But the debate mostly centres on the question of whether the ban will work, which is downstream of the crucial question that the policy actually has to answer: Are platforms appropriate developmental environments for children at all?  I find myself in favour of the ban, despite not liking bans much and thinking that the means of implementation will probably fail on their own terms. Worse, I expect the solutions will include an overreach allowing monitoring ...
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June update...(9.6.26)

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I wanted to post a bit of a midyear update here. I may ramble slightly, so forgive me for that as I look at the year so far. For those here mainly for therapy-related content, you are fully excused if you skip this one. First, a little housekeeping. I am away for the first week of July, and possibly for a week in August too, though that is not yet confirmed. I will keep clients updated directly about any changes to availability. Some people have very kindly asked about my health, and I'm happy to say it is still improving after a few months of sickness from Sep last year. Many days now I barely think about the tremor at all, which feels like real progress. I feel it more when stressed, so the main risk for me is still overdoing things. I remain stubbornly prone to mistaking “feeling a bit better” for “excellent, let’s reorganise the entire house, the website, the profession, and possibly Western civilisation before lunch.” So I'm trying, with mixed success, to pace myself…  Ann...
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The Right Not to Be Interpreted...(2.6.26)

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On therapeutic restraint, and why some experiences need company before they need meaning.  The consulting room is one of the last genuinely private spaces left in contemporary life. Phones are almost always tucked away. There’s no script. No transcript. No audit trail beyond what the therapist chooses to write down afterwards. Two people meeting in a room, with the door closed, doing something almost no one else will ever see. I remember being struck by this in training, when I first watched the Gloria tapes - Rogers, Perls, and Ellis each working with the same client in the late nineteen-sixties, filmed for teaching purposes. The footage felt almost…well… transgressive. The curtain lifted on something that normally happens out of sight. Most therapists go their entire careers without ever watching another therapist work, except perhaps in role-plays during training, which for a lot of us is many years in the rear-view mirror. We do this job in isolation, behind closed doors, and m...
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The Starmer Problem...(18.5.26)

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A confession: I find Keir Starmer genuinely irritating. There, I said it.  I want to get that out of the way now because I am trying to make a broader structural argument about managerial culture, institutional thinning, and the kind of political class Britain now produces, and the hapless Starmer happens to be an unusually clear example of it. The structure itself is equal opportunities, and I am not seeking to single out Labour or declare my political allegiances, which are irrelevant. Also, I don’t want anyone thinking I arrived at my irritation through dispassionate analysis. Nope. It came from prolonged exposure to a man who somehow manages to radiate the atmosphere of a compliance seminar while standing perfectly still. That voice. The prosecutorial cadence, nasalling away about international law. The rolled-up sleeves that are supposed to signal ordinary bloke but instead signal someone who has been briefed on what ordinary blokes do with their sleeves. He is, on a purely vi...
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