(a slightly abbreviated version of this blog post is downloadable as both a Word doc & a PDF file)  

"Why shouldn't truth be stranger than fiction?  Fiction, after all, has to make sense."  Mark Twain 

This blog post is downloadable as both a Word doc & a PDF file.

I wrote an initial blog post last month on "Antonio Damasio's 'Self comes to mind': overview".  I commented that I wanted to think a bit more about three of the areas covered in the book - "Emotions and the body", "Memory and the autobiographical self" and "Mindfulness, protoself, core and autobiographical self" - and I wrote a post "Antonio Damasio's 'Self comes to mind': emotions & the body 1".  Today I want to write further on this "Emotions and the body" topic.

See the two earlier blog posts - "Therapeutic writing & speaking: inspiration from values (background information)" and "Therapeutic writing & speaking: inspiration from values (how-to-do-it)" for fuller details of these self-affirmation, self-transcendence approaches.

This "instructions" post is downloadable as a Word doc. 

Here are seven recent research studies - largely about the effects of early life adversity on adult psychological health (although I've slipped in one I find important on the prevalence & effects of subsyndromal/subclinical symptoms).  The last two papers touch on the truth or falsity of Nietsche's famous saying "What does not destroy me makes me stronger".