John Oldham M.D. What do George W. Bush, Ronald Reagan and Harry Truman have in common aside from being past presidents? All developed a psychological condition called the hubris syndrome while in office, says Lord David Owen, a peer in the U.K.’s House of Lords and a physician-author of several remarkable books, including In Sickness […]
John M. Oldham, MD Why is it that so few people who recover from an episode of severe depression never have another one? This question, addressed in a recent New York Times article, brought to mind one of my own: What does personality have to do with it? Flourishing After Depression In the New York […]
By John M. Oldham, MD For $99.95, anyone can purchase a lie detector from Walmart. Who buys a polygraph test? Who uses it? Who relies on the results? These are questions I can’t answer, and I was surprised to find one being marketed to the public, since even in expert hands, lie detection results are […]
Want to know why casting headlines as “fake news” gets traction with so many people? The strategy, say psychologists, is “plausible deniability,” meaning the claim cannot be proven wrong in the moment. The strategy is often put to use by overly confident politicians and business leaders among others, say researchers at the University of Notre […]
There is a lot in the air these days about the narcissistic personality of prominent people. But what is narcissism, really? Is having narcissistic traits good or bad? How much is healthy narcissism and how much is a true narcissistic personality disorder? Scholars of behavior have described healthy narcissism as a plus, a useful personality […]
