Porn categories reflect historical taboos 5 March 2017 Posted by: Michael H Hallett Category: History , Pornography , No Comments WARNING: Contains nude images As you are no doubt aware, PornHub recently released their statistics for 2016. Being very graphic people, they produced a nicely-coloured map of the world showing the top porn categories for […]
A brief history of shame 3 March 2017 Posted by: Michael H Hallett Category: Cornerstones , Shame , 4 Comments In What is unconscious shame? I’ve written about how shame affects us today. In What is ancestral trauma? I’ve written about the shame we still unconsciously carry from the dim and distant past. This brief […]
Freud, repression and today’s anxiety epidemic 11 December 2015 Posted by: Michael H Hallett Category: Anxiety , History , No Comments In 1929 Sigmund Freud, the ‘founding father’ of psychoanalysis, wrote a book that was originally titled The Uneasiness in Culture. It finally emerged a year later as one of his seminal works, Civilization and its Discontents. […]
Paris, paint and prostitutes 24 September 2015 Posted by: Michael H Hallett Category: Arts , History , Sexuality , No Comments In the second half of the 19th century Paris saw the confluence of two major streams of change. The first was to the French capital itself. The cramped old arrondissements were demolished to make way for Baron […]
Valentine’s Day origins in Roman orgies 12 February 2015 Posted by: Michael H Hallett Category: History , Sexuality , No Comments Valentine’s Day is upon us and as a result the price of a blood-red rose skyrockets. Misty-eyed lovers feverishly scribble anonymous cards to the various paramours they are desperately besotted with (or simply fancy shagging). […]
Anne Frank’s genitalia – sex meets history 23 September 2014 Posted by: Michael H Hallett Category: History , Sexuality , No Comments One of the most poignant memoirs of the World War II Holocaust, Anne Frank’s Diary, has recently become the battleground in an entirely different kind of war. Anne Frank’s Diary Gail Horalek, the mother […]
Pioneers of unconscious shame 3 September 2013 Posted by: Michael H Hallett Category: History , Shame , No Comments On this site I have written extensively about unconscious shame – an invisible sense of shamefulness that cripples us through low self worth, anxiety, and emotional and sexual dysfunction. The idea of some overarching disease that’s […]
Veils and vaginas – why do patriarchies control sex? 25 June 2012 Posted by: Michael H Hallett Category: History , News , Patriarchy , No Comments In an incendiary article in Foreign Policy magazine titled Why Do They Hate Us? [link no longer works] Mona Eltahawy lays bare the “pulsating heart of misogyny in the Middle East” with a […]