In a recent Psychiatric Times interview with Lucy Johnstone,1 the interviewer took the very unusual step of seeking ‘clarification’ from two psychiatrists that she mentioned in the interview. These ‘clarifications’ were then published at the end of the interview. One of these psychiatrists, the eminent professor Sir Robin Murray, concluded with the following statement: ‘Sadly, a few psychologists appear to have been stranded in a Jurassic world where they spend their energies

Originally a British paediatrician by trade, Donald Winnicott (1896-1971) became a central figure in mid-20th-century psychoanalysis. Outside of the cognitive and behavioural schools, his enduring influence on psychotherapeutic theory is arguably second only to that of Sigmund Freud. Though he didn’t explicitly dissent from the then prevailing Freudian orthodoxy, the theory we can abstract from his sometimes ambiguous work is radically at odds with the Freudian model and inde

Toward the end of the Renaissance period, a radical epistemological and metaphysical shift overcame the Western psyche. The advances of Nicolaus Copernicus, Galileo Galilei and Francis Bacon posed a serious problem for Christian dogma and its dominion over the natural world. Following Bacon’s arguments, the natural world was now to be understood solely in terms of efficient causes (ie, external effects). Any inherent meaning or purpose to the natural world (ie, its ‘formal’