Matt Ayoubi

Psychology post-grad student.

Research interests: philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, linguistics, literature and human nature.

[Rob Henderson @robkhenderson]

Montaigne on lying:

[Ava @noampomsky]

I think about this all the time

[Ulrich @UlrichFY]

"Lorsque les femmes nous aiment, elles nous pardonnent tout, même nos crimes. Quand elles ne nous aiment pas, elles ne nous pardonnent rien, pas même nos vertus." - Balzac

[Frannyfanny @proud_penelope]

“Psychoanalysis is about getting over yourself” - D Carveth

[Jayant Golchhā « 高智仁 » @golchha_J]

@sean_a_mcclure

[O.W. Root @owroot]

Apart from the jokes about the fact that (allegedly) getting decimated for three days due to a couple of glasses of wine one night is the lamest thing I've heard in a long time and something that even an 86 year old granny wouldn't admit to, there is something interesting here about the religious impulse of people.

So much of this kind of stuff - health / efficiency maxed stuff - is just secularized religious impulse. It's obvious in the way they talk about the substances or ingredients whatever it may be. There is a decidedly strident kind of "believing" tone. They exaggerate a lot.

For example, there is no way this guy was actually negatively impacted for three days in any meaningful way. Maybe he believes somewhere he feels it but by no reasonable way of understanding our body did it really happen to him.

They exaggerate the positives and the negatives in a kind of religious fervor to justify it. They are basically performing a pretty standard religious impulse - separating things into holy vs unholy / pure vs impure / sacred vs profane. They don't use that language of course. The whole point here is that it is secularized religious impulse, but that's what it is.

It's interesting once you see it as that. People are searching and want to feel that religious fervor even if they don't see themselves as religious. They ache for the feeling of righteousness, whether it be in casting out the demonic seed oils, forgoing the evil spirit water known as wine, or seeking salvation in the perfected sleep score.

[Istra of Glome @byistra]

C.S. Lewis' guide to finding your "real" self

[Richard Gipps @DrGipps]

Blue moods used to be brown. Hence the "brown study" - when quite lost in melancholic daydream. “I fell into a brown study as I walked on, and a voice at my side made me start.” (Dickens).

[Istra of Glome @byistra]

G.K. Chesterton on the popularity of the novel

[blue @cyanopsis]

the obsessive desire to know yourself is pathological. true healing isn’t when you wholly understand yourself but when you stop mattering to yourself and devote yourself to something bigger

[Joshua D Phillips @JoshPhillipsPhD]

“Read great works of literature out loud. If you do not understand what you are reading, stop, figure out what it means, then repeat the exercise. Do this an hour a day & in time, your own voice, your own thoughts, will become the same as Tolstoy, Faulkner, Twain”

Norm Macdonald

[Allen Frances @AllenFrancesMD]

Best summary of what psychiatric diagnosis is/& what it is not.

Should be read (& often reread) by every clinician/patient/trainee/family member.

Congratulations @awaisaftab https://t.co/D3faLVpGtq

[𝐑𝐨𝐛𝐞𝐫𝐭 𝐌𝐨𝐨𝐫 @robertmoor_]

This is basically what philosophers and anthropologists mean when they say that the 'individual' is a relatively modern construct, and that many other cultures conceive of people in a more porous, contingent, interwoven fashion. Weird as it sounds, it's just observably true.

[kevin l. lee @Klee_FilmReview]

Oh man, this actually making me emotional

[Luke Burgis @lukeburgis]

The Girardian prayer par excellence

[Edmund @Kulambq]

We speak often, and quite rightly, of the civilising effect of reading great books and listening to beautiful music. Yet it still bears repeating, as it is rarely mentioned, that the patient contemplation of a great painting is no less important. To stand before it, to examine it closely, to allow it to set the terms of engagement, is to sharpen our sense of being. It refines the eye, disciplines the mind, and teaches us to see the world afresh.

[nick @nickemmons]

One of my favourite quotes comes from an obscure book written by a Scottish mountaineer in the 50s

[Matt Ayoubi @IsmatAub]

@Pontifex Have you been reading Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation, your holiness?