During my maiden visit to Lucknow in 2013, I dropped into the legendary Ram Advani Booksellers. One of the books that I picked up from the visit was Sudhir Kakar’s memoir, ‘Book of Memories’ - a work that first introduced me to the trailblazing Kamla Chowdhry. Kakar -India’s most celebrated psychoanalyst was her nephew while … Continue reading Sudhir Kakar (1938-2024)
It’s fashionable to be in therapy these days. Unlike the previous generation, youngsters and adults alike have no qualms in reaching out for help and the stigma around mental health is also on the wane. All good news. But the flip side of this has been the increasing phenomenon of ‘therapy’ speak in the lives … Continue reading The Flip Side of Therapy
We live in a world that places a premium on creativity. Companies expect their employees to be creative, parents want their children to become creative, mayors want to convert their cities to creative hubs, translators want to be acknowledged for their creative skills and artists strive to express their unique visions through creative work. But … Continue reading The Cult of Creativity
Grit is the technical term for persevering and being passionate about a project. Reading Angela Duckworth’s work on this subject a few years back, was my first encounter with ‘quitting’ as a psychological concept. According to Duckworth, every pursuit driven by grit has to be regularly assessed against the rationality of quitting. Annie Duke’s dedicated … Continue reading On Quitting
Philosophers have a nice skill of taking a random emotion or a word and then analyzing it in the form of a book. The Oxford University Press has a seven-volume series covering the Seven Sins, Agnes Callard wrote about Aspiration, Annie Duke on Quitting, de Botton on Love and so on and so forth. Nick … Continue reading Understanding ‘Awesomeness’
