An increasing number of people are becoming interested in Mindfulness, in their quest to reduce stress and anxiety in daily life.

The following is taken from The Mental Health Foundation website - the original article can be found here 

Mindfulness is a mind-body based approach that helps people change the way they think and feel about their experiences, especially stressful experiences.

Mindfulness exercises or mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) are ways of paying attention to the present moment, using techniques like meditation, breathing and yoga. Mindfulness training helps us become more aware of our thoughts and feelings so that instead of being overwhelmed by them, we're better able to manage them.

It's been known for millennia that the way we think and the way we handle how we feel plays a big part in mental health. Taking a mindfulness course can give people more insight into their emotions, boost their attention and concentration and improve relationships.

MBCT is recommended by the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) for the prevention of relapse in recurrent depression. It combines mindfulness techniques like meditation, breathing exercises and stretching with elements from cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) to help break the negative thought patterns that are characteristic of recurrent depression. Mindfulness is a potentially life-changing way to alter our feelings in positive ways, and an ever-expanding body of evidence shows that it really works.

Evidence

Mindfulness meditation has been shown to affect how the brain works and even its structure. People undertaking mindfulness training have shown increased activity in the area of the brain associated with positive emotion – the pre-frontal cortex – which is generally less active in people who are depressed.

More than 100 studies have shown changes in brain wave activity during meditation and researchers have found that areas of the brain linked to emotional regulation are larger in people who have meditated regularly for five years.

Research shows that Mindfulness can help with:

recurrent depression

anxiety disorders

addictive behaviour

stress

chronic pain

chronic fatigue syndrome

insomnia

plus more mental and physical problems.

There is growing evidence that Mindfulness in the workplace can improve productivity and decrease sickness absence, and increasingly employers are looking to benefit from its effect on workplace wellbeing. Find out more at Mindfulnet.

Almost three-quarters of GPs think mindfulness meditation would be helpful for people with mental health problems, and a third already refer patients to MBCT on a regular basis. (Source: ICM survey June 2009 of 250 GPs). With the increase in talking therapies being instigated across the UK this is something that you can raise and discuss with your GP.

Benefitting from mindfulness therapies

MBCT is usually a weekly course of classes taught over two months, but there are also online courses available that can be done in your own time, at home or even at work. These courses teach people how to manage their thoughts and feelings in a way that makes depression less likely to occur.

Such treatment has been shown to cut relapse rates in half for recurrent depression.

Find out more about mindfulness and its benefits on the Be Mindful website, where you can:

watch videos and listen to podcasts

find out about courses in your area

share your experience of mindfulness at the The Oxford Mindfulness Centre

give your support for increased access to mindfulness therapy on the NHS.

Mindfulness courses don’t require any religious or spiritual beliefs. Mindfulness is suitable for, and can help people with any religious beliefs or people with none at all.

Whether you want to learn new techniques for coping with stress in the workplace or at home, manage anxiety or depression or improve your concentration, energy levels and enjoyment of life, Mindfulness is a valuable tool. In fact, mindfulness meditation can have such a positive impact on our mental and physical well-being that many GPs say that all people could benefit from learning the techniques.

Three videos on Mindfulness:

What causes the bliss and euphoria of love to end, to suddenly turn into conflict? As explained in "The Celestine Prophecy"

Over the holidays I have been revisiting the transcendental psychology novel, "The Celestine Prophecy" by James Redfield, which I first read with friends from a local village back in 1994, twenty years ago.  

Back then we would meet up and discuss the various insights and how we could apply them to our own personalities, our past and our present lives, and it is so interesting now to see how much of this learning I adopted and incorporated into my own life, even though the book seems to have a religious message and I am a lifelong agnostic.

I highly encourage people to read the novel or listen to it as an audio book (particularly good to relax with at the end of the day). Allow me to share some of my notes and observations, all these years on.

What causes the bliss and euphoria of love to end, to suddenly turn into conflict?

This is explained in "The Celestine Prophecy" as addiction to another person, and ventures into Jungian territory (and even Freudian) for those of you who follow their teachings...

When love first happens, the two individuals are giving each other energy unconsciously and both people feel buoyant and elated. That's the incredible high we all call being in love.... They cut themselves off from others, from the universe and seek to gain all their energy from one person, which is unsustainable and eventually each stops giving so much energy and reverts to old psycho dramas to seek to control the other, forcing the lover's energy their way. At this point the relationship degenerates into the usual power struggle. The problem starts in our early family life, because most of us were not given enough positive energy - attention from adults - none of us were able to complete an important psychological process, we weren't able to integrate our opposite sexual side, and the reason we can become addicted to someone of the opposite sex, is that we are yet to access this opposite sex energy ourselves. We mistakenly think the only way of having the opposite sex energy we crave, is to possess someone sexually and keeping them close to us physically (as a child might with their opposite sex parent). The problem is, most parents are competing with their own children for energy, within a family, because we are looking for this opposite sex energy externally in another human being rather than finding it within ourselves.

Make any sense?

So it also talks about the way when we're perhaps younger and we fall in love we're looking for someone else to be our "other half" to "complete us" is a phrase we often hear, and relationships like this, where the individuals are perhaps quite needy, are destined to fail unless one person is prepared to submit to the other and let them dominate the relationship and decisions. It can never be a mature mutual relationship if we don't feel complete ourselves, if we haven't yet learned to love ourselves and value who and what we are.

Often, you find a couple where one person is shy and the other very confident, one is exceptionally attractive and the other very plain, one academic and the other not so intellectually bright. It is sometimes thought that these opposites attract in a very natural and positive way, but in fact each individual is seeking to compensate for their lack of attractiveness or lack of confidence and so on, by bonding with someone who has qualities they wish they themselves possessed. And it never really works, this idea of someone completing us, because you ultimately have two halves of a person making up one whole and that whole has two heads... two egos... eventually they start pulling in opposite directions in their desire to gain and maintain energy.

And so often people get romantically involved without first building a solid foundation of a strong platonic friendship. This is needed because it is the only way a couple can build a deeper level of trust. Going to bed with someone before you have established this level of trust tends to result in nervousness (unless you're drunk) because you're naked, physically and emotionally, and you don't know this person well enough really to be that intimate with them, you have no idea really if they will turn around and laugh at you. Often there is embarrassment in these sexual encounters. If you feel embarrassed when you're in bed with someone, it's far too soon and any relationship is highly unlikely to last.

Link to James Redfield's Celestine Vision site.

You can buy "The Celestine Prophecy" here.

Best of 2013

My personal Best of, for 2013...  Five stars to all of the following:

Television drama of 2013

BBC One - Mayday

Radio drama of 2013

BBC R4 - Paul Temple and the Gregory Affair

Novel of 2013

Return to the Stones - Jeremy Burnham

Photographer of 2013 

Jamie Glenday

Musician of 2013 

Adam Hurst

Track "Wilderness" from the album "Nightfall"

Comedian of 2013 - I can't split these two, I love them both

Barry Catagnola

and 

Marc Wootton

Some memorable moments of 2013

Street parties celebrated the death of much loathed former Prime Minister,

 Margaret Thatcher, who died in April

Soweto Gospel Choir paid a beautiful tribute to much loved fomer President, 

Nelson Mandela, who died in December

Irritating tips and Christmas advice!

Searching for a good article about coping with stress and anxiety at Christmas, to share with clients, I was amazed with the amount of patronising rubbish I ended up reading, no doubt written by people with plenty of money and in very good health.  On the whole, I didn't find advice like this especially helpful or reassuring.

Here's a selection that actually made me more stressed and annoyed, than I was before I read them!

• Budget sensibly - Just because all your son's friends are getting an Xbox One, that doesn't mean he's entitled to one, particularly if you're a less well off family. Explain to your children that Christmas has become too commercialised, educate them about the dangers of violent games such as Grand Theft Auto and show them how to have good old fashioned family fun by getting out your old Monopoly board. (Actually, a recent survey found arguments erupted in a whopping 46% of families that played Monopoly over Christmas.  Scrabble accounted for family feuds in 23% of households that played the word game!  To date, there is no clinical evidence that playing GTA leads to violence or anti-social behaviour.)

• Make a pledge that this festive season you will not smoke, drink or eat any of those tempting but oh so naughty Christmas treats, which won't make you happy, they will merely increase your risk of cancer, heart disease and type two diabetes.  (Could have been written by Iain Duncan Smith, himself!!)

• Avoid the stress of sleeping in your childhood bedroom at your stepfather's house by booking into a nice nearby hotel for a couple of nights, therefore turning a dreaded family event into a Christmas treat.  (Hang on, I thought you said we should budget better!  If we skipped putting the family up in a 4 star hotel, we could afford little Jake's Xbox!!)

• Instead of vegging out in front of the television with a tin of Quality Street for two days, get yourself outside for a long brisk walk in the countryside. The exercise and fresh air will burn off those extra Christmas calories, improve your mood and wear you out - a much more healthy aid to sleep than those habit forming tablets!  (Not too sure how this would work for those with mobility problems or people living in the city - sadly we don't all live within walking distance of a country estate!)

• Remember, Christmas is just one day, don't get stressed out if every present isn't perfect, or the custard on your trifle doesn't set properly.  It's just one day!  There's always next year! (Words fail me!!!)

Could LSD and Ecstasy be effectively used to treat PTSD? - THE MAGICAL MYSTERY CURE - Richard Shrubb article from May 2013

In May 2013, Richard Shrubb reported for Therapy Today, on controversial trials that use Class A drugs such as LSD and ecstasy to treat depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.

A small number of pioneering psychiatrists, psychologists and psychotherapists are researching how certain Class A drugs can be used with very positive effect to help people with severe, chronic psychological and emotional health problems.

Despite the practical and legal difficulties, pilot trials are currently under way into the use of LSD, pure MDMA (ecstasy) and psilocybin (magic mushrooms) as an adjunct to conventional talking therapies for the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and in end-of-life care.

The therapeutic use of banned drugs has featured in the UK national media headlines in recent months, thanks to the outspoken David Nutt, Professor of Neuropsychopharmacology at Imperial College London and former Chair of the Government’s Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs. He was sacked from the Advisory Council in 2009 after declaring that ecstasy was less dangerous than horse riding (in terms of adverse incidents per use). In a subsequent paper he classified drugs according to the harm they caused; alcohol and tobacco emerged as more harmful than ecstasy and cannabis.

In September last year, he, with Val Curran, professor of psychology at University College London, joined forces with Channel 4 to film some of the participants (including the novelist Lionel Shriver) in a study that used fMRI imaging to examine the effects of MDMA on the brain. In April this year, in his presentation to the British Neuroscience Association’s biennial conference, he roundly condemned the British Government for blocking attempts to develop more effective treatments for depression with what he says are its ‘irrational’ drugs laws. 

Nutt wants to research the use of the chemical psilocybin, the psychedelic ingredient in magic mushrooms, which he says can suppress activity in the parts of the brain that are overactive in severely depressed people. But, because magic mushrooms are a Class A drug, their active chemical ingredient cannot be manufactured without a special licence. Despite a grant of £550,000 from the Medical Research Council to begin a three-year project to test the drug on people with depression, Nutt and his team have been unable to progress because they can’t get the comparatively small amount of the drug needed to conduct their trials. It isn’t easy to find companies who can manufacture the drug and are prepared to stump up the estimated £100,000 and go through all the bureaucratic hoops to get a licence.

Nutt’s research has already established that psilocybin appears to switch off the ruminative parts of the brain that are overactive in people with depression. ‘We badly need more types of treatment [for depression] but we cannot pursue these because the Government is denying scientists access to powerful tools that could help people in need,’ Nutt told the conference. ‘The whole field is so bedevilled by primitive old-fashioned attitudes. Even if you have a good idea, you may never get it into the clinic, it seems.’

MDMA and PTSD

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is notoriously difficult to treat, and a condition for which almost no drugs are being developed. Psychotherapy is generally regarded as the treatment of choice for the condition. NICE guidance recommends: ‘All people with PTSD should be offered a course of trauma-focused psychological treatment (trauma-focused CBT or EMDR)’.

At the heart of PTSD is the issue of avoidance: the patient finds the experience too difficult to face and is therefore unable to process it. Clinical trials are being conducted in Israel, the US, Canada and Switzerland into the use of MDMA-assisted psychotherapy to treat PTSD. The trials are funded fully or in part by the US-based charity Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), a research and educational organisation dedicated to promoting use of psychedelics and marijuana for therapeutic purposes.

South Carolina-based psychotherapist Michael Mithoefer is leading one of the trials. Mithoefer, a psychiatrist by training, believes that MDMA can open doors in the mind, whether the person wants it or not. The MDMA-assisted therapy sessions are eight hours long, with two therapists present – generally a male and a female so the client can talk to either, as they prefer. Though an apparently intense session – 45 minutes can be a lot for most patients in traditional non-drug psychotherapy – it is designed to be completely relaxed and without pressure.

It takes place in a non-clinical setting and, as the drug takes effect and the session progresses, the client finds him/herself talking naturally about the stressor that is causing them so much trouble. ‘We have an agreement with the client that if nothing comes up during the session at a certain point, the therapist can engage them. This has never happened yet,’ Mithoefer says. Few of the clients found taking MDMA an ‘ecstatic experience’, according to Mithoefer, and all have been able to both face the trauma and not be traumatised by doing so.

Outcomes to date indicate that MDMA-assisted psychotherapy is achieving results.1, 2 Twenty patients with chronic PTSD that had not responded to other forms of psychotherapy and drug treatment were randomly assigned to psychotherapy with MDMA or a placebo. The participants had suffered PTSD for an average of 19 years. Most of those who underwent the MDMA-assisted therapy had not relapsed 3.5 years later. Four out of five of the MDMA treatment group improved, compared with just one in four of those in the placebo group. The study found no evidence of drug-related serious side effects or adverse neurocognitive effects and concluded that MDMA can be given safely to people with PTSD, and may be particularly useful for those who have not responded to other treatments.2

Stephen Joseph, Professor of Psychology, Health and Social Care at the University of Nottingham, is sceptical. He has pioneered psychological techniques to treat PTSD and is the author of What Doesn’t Kill Us: a guide to moving forward and overcoming adversity, on post-traumatic growth. He argues: ‘In a nurturing, supportive environment, people can let go. If you rush them they will become more avoidant. You have to build up the client’s trust over a couple of months.’ Indeed, ‘it is important to spend a lot of time not talking about their trauma’. Joseph is concerned about the use of any kind of drug to treat PTSD: ‘PTSD is not a psychiatric disorder – it is more of a bereavement. You cannot medicate an existential crisis.’ But he is prepared to be convinced: ‘I’d be interested to see where we are when the research is complete in 10 years. I may well be surprised.’

MDMA and social anxiety

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is currently considering an application from MAPS to conduct an MDMA-assisted psychotherapy trial for social anxiety among autistic adults.

Dr Berra Yazar-Klosinski, Lead Clinical Research Assistant at MAPS, says there is a lot of anecdotal data suggesting that MDMA can help with social anxiety, ‘although there is little hard science on the subject’. 

Put very simply, MAPS is arguing that MDMA can address social anxiety by reducing the individual’s reactions to negative social interactions and enhancing the feel-good effect of positive interactions. The treatments are once or twice only, several weeks apart. There is no suggestion that people should be regularly dosed with MDMA, like an antidepressant or antipsychotic. The theory is that MDMA is a ‘teacher’, not a ‘helper’.

Julian, a Londoner who has Asperger’s, has taken MDMA at raves and confirms this effect: ‘It seems to help filter out the signals you normally get, teaching you how others see social interaction.’

To help design the pilot study, MAPS brought in Nick Walker, who has autism and has taken MDMA recreationally. A teacher on the Interdisciplinary Studies programme at California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco, Walker says: ‘Though MDMA is empathogenic for most who take it, the theory that autistic people lack empathy is complete rubbish.’ He feels that social anxiety results from the power imbalance imposed on the autistic by ‘neurotypical’ mainstream society. ‘Autistic people are generally bullied at school and misunderstood as children. By their adolescence and adulthood they are traumatised from being taught they are somehow wrong. MDMA makes you warm and welcoming. It helps you get involved in others’ interests. How do you share your interests? By getting over your social fear.’

LSD-assisted therapy

Dr Peter Gasser was able to practise psychedelic assisted psychotherapy in the 1990s under licence in Switzerland, as a member of the Swiss Association of Psychedelic Therapists. The licence was revoked when LSD and other psychedelics were banned even for medical use in 1993, but Gasser has since been given a licence to run a clinical trial into its use in end-of-life psychotherapy, partly sponsored by MAPS.3 The results have yet to be published.

Taking LSD is a very intense and transformative, almost religious experience, according to research assistant Katharina Kirchner, who worked with Gasser and wrote her Master’s thesis on LSD-assisted end-of-life psychotherapy.

Many writers over the years have likened the experience of taking LSD to Eastern mystic religious experiences. Kirchner challenges this: ‘Those who have the language of the Eastern mystic experience speak of an LSD trip on those terms. An ordinary person from a village in Switzerland or Germany doesn’t have that language to use, so describes their experience on the terms they have for reference.’ 

Kirchner practises meditation and describes the LSD experience as like ‘taking a train to a peak meditative experience. You arrive in under an hour where through learning meditation it sometimes takes years to achieve that destination – not unlike walking’. One participant had a horrifying experience in the first trip, which they described as ‘… really black, the black side. I was afraid, was shaking [...] Really it was a total strain, no way out, no escaping.’ They had reservations about taking the next trip but this proved more positive: ‘Suddenly there came a phase of relaxation. Completely detached. It became bright. Everything was light. It is a pleasant feeling, a warm feeling. No pain. Almost like floating, like being carried, and together with the music… really wonderful…’

The protocol for the Gasser clinical trial explains that psychotherapy will take place before, during and after the LSD session. During the experience, ‘as appropriate, the investigators will engage with the participant to support and encourage emotional processing and resolution of whatever psychological material is emerging. The investigators will also encourage periods of time in which the participant remains silent with eyes closed and with attention focused introspectively on his or her sense of self and life history in order to increase the psychological insights mediated by the LSD treatment’.

Very simply, there are two forms of experience, depending on the dose of LSD. A low dose is known as ‘psycholytic’ – it is still intense and transformative, but the client doesn’t ‘leave the planet’ or hallucinate bright lights, for instance. The other dose is a ‘psychedelic’ experience and will result in complete release from reality. Kirchner says 300 microgrammes in most cases will bring about a psycholytic experience, depending on the person’s body weight, health and stage of illness; 400mcg is the minimum needed to achieve a peak psychedelic experience in a healthy adult of a typical weight.

The therapy environment itself is similar to that for MDMA-assisted therapy: a calm, relaxing and non-clinical setting. The patient wears a blindfold and can choose to listen to music. They are given the LSD under the supervision of two therapists. Kirchner says: ‘Therapists are there to guide you through the experience and help along the way.’ After the trip has worn off, the client goes to bed and is left to sleep overnight – although a therapist is there for them to speak to if they wish at any time. Kirchner explains: ‘Patients often just need time to process their experience and understand what they have seen and felt.’ They receive talking therapy the next day, but again in a non-traditional way – the therapist is there simply to listen and help the person articulate what they felt, heard and saw, not to interpret or analyse it.

In her thesis Kirchner argues that LSD opens the individual’s mind to a different viewpoint and way of thinking while they remain conscious, so they gain a different perspective on the seemingly intractable issue (for example, their impending death) facing them. Brad Burge, Director of Communications at MAPS, puts it more simply: ‘With end of life therapy one comes to the understanding that “I do not end where my body ends”.’

As the end-of-life research progresses, the hope is that enough scientific evidence will be gathered to break through the social and legal barriers that are currently blocking the therapeutic application of these and other so-called recreational drugs.

Case study: ‘By letting go I regained my mind’

Mikee (not his real name) was a Forward Air Controller for the US Army during the Surge in Iraq in 2006-07. He had to get artillery and air strikes signed off by officers. ‘There were so many career officers in it for themselves that would not sign off strikes when I deemed them necessary that I had to sit by while 20 men were killed in six months whose lives I could have saved.’

PTSD is severely stigmatised in the US Army, particularly among elite soldiers like Mikee. Until he was medically discharged with a broken back, and his behaviour in civilian life forced his hand, he wouldn’t admit his problems.

‘As a soldier your mind controls everything. You live in the next five seconds in a structure that controls everything you do. In civilian life there is no control of your life,’ says Mikee. He became violent on several occasions and had difficulty reintegrating with civilian life.

For Mikee, taking MDMA allowed him to let go of the control, which allowed him to understand what was going on for him. ‘The feeling initially was extreme anxiety as I was about to come up on the drug, but when I became high I was only anxious when I had a thought about my past and didn’t talk about it. When I talked about the thing, in my head I relaxed. By letting go and no longer being in control, I regained my mind.’

Asked how he has changed, Mikee says: ‘I feel as if I have grown as a person. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger!’

Mikee is now going to medical school to learn to be a doctor. He wants to study psychedelics as part of therapy and help his former buddies cope with civilian life when they too leave the Armed Forces.

Link to original article:  http://www.therapytoday.net/article/show/3703/

Related video:  HORIZONS Psychedelics Forum: Treating PTSD with MDMA-assisted therapy

Powerful messages to unite those oppressed by this government - Brilliant Mark Steel clips.

Mark Steel is someone who has consistently used his public voice to speak out and reject the government's brutal austerity cuts.  Through his column in The Independent, his online blog and Twitter, he continues to express intelligent objection to the damage being inflicted on the great mass of the British public, by people who are already obscenely rich and who seek to make themselves ever more wealthy, at the expense of the poor and needy.

One of his most powerful messages, is that things can change, relatively quickly, if people find the courage to unite behind a good campaign, despite some arguing change away from a selfish capitalist society will take too long.  He reminds us that twenty years ago, if you thought people of the same sex should have the right to get married, just as a heterosexual couple could, it's likely you may have been considered to have extreme views away from the centre ground.  Today, twenty years on,if you object to the right to same sex marriage, you are now considered an extremist with views and values which have no place in modern society.

And he talks of a time, in the not so distant future, when people will look back and be horrified at these attacks on people's lives and their communities, and question why it was allowed to carry on, so brutally, and for so long, relatively unopposed.  

Here is a small handful of his many and varied appearances, standing up for the poor, challenging government policy and encouraging people to unite against this oppression.  After all, we still have another seventeen months to go until we get the chance to vote the Tories out of office.  

Contemporary literature which deals with the same political issues and concerns:

#FEAR by J A Maidley, is a dystopian novella set against a political backdrop in near-future Britain. The story serves as a warning of the dangers when we allow government oppression to go on, year after year, largely unopposed.  You can read a sample here.

Three fascinating lectures by Professor Glenn D. Wilson - on Sex, Sleep and Creativity

Whatever Turns You On - Professor Glenn D. Wilson

Sleep and Dreams - Professor Glenn D. Wilson

Genius or Madness- the Psychology of Creativity - Professor Glenn D. Wilson

Test your psychopathic traits - Channel 4 Psychopath Night

Channel 4 are running a fascinating feature on the psychopathic mind.

Psychopathy is a condition that causes people to display anti-social behaviour, lack of empathy and remorse, and fearless dominance. Find out more here.

Everyone has these characteristics to some degree - take the test and find out where you sit on the spectrum.

Take the test here.

I took the test myself...

YOUR SCORE - 12%

You are warm and empathic with a heightened awareness of social responsibility and a strong sense of conscience. You like to carefully weigh up the pros and cons of a situation before you act and are generally averse to taking risks. You are very much a ‘people person’ and dislike conflict. ‘Do unto others…’ are your watchwords. But, although you avoid hurting others, those residing at the higher end of the psychopathic spectrum might not be as considerate, so stay vigilant to avoid being hurt unnecessarily.

A fairly typical result, I imagine, for a counsellor and a novelist...

There's also a spot the psychopath game here.

How to write about, and portray sex in fiction.

"Like many younger readers who had not yet experienced sex, except with myself, I was deeply misled by 'Lady Chatterley's Lover', which seemed to insist that running naked through damp undergrowth, with wild flowers entwined in your pubic hair, was just about the closest thing to heaven."

In his Radio 3 Essay, 'Explaining the Explicit', Man Booker Prize winner Julian Barnes posed the question, "Is writing about sex, the same as writing about any other human activity - say gardening or cricket?" His exploration of the subject (including an amusing analysis of an Evelyn Waugh sex scene) was compelling, and went on to talk about self-consciousness and exposure; the fear that readers will assume the sexual encounters you're writing about actually happened to you, and how this impacts on the tone of the way you write about sex. "The naming of parts:  which parts do you name and what names do you give them? At the basic level... He put his what into her, or indeed his, what?"  He talks of John Updike comparing the male member, in one novel, to a yam, which made visualising the sexual scene difficult, the reader being distracted by mental images of a vegetable stall.

"The proper, grown up novel is the most intimate of art forms," concludes Barnes, "the one that puts the reader's mind and heart most closely in touch with the minds and hearts of the characters.  It is the place where the most truth about the intimacies of life can, and should, still be told." 

The full recording can be found here:    Explaining the Explicit

Last year, while completing a novel about a fairly dysfunctional (middle-class) family I found myself in the slightly uncomfortable position of having to write a sex scene.

Well, I say a sex scene, but love scene would describe it more accurately, because it's really rather tender and in many ways quite innocent, and though I found it necessary to describe the sleepy, sensual foreplay leading up to the sex act, I stopped short of portraying the intercourse itself, I'm not sure what Julian Barnes would say about that.

I had deliberated long and hard about whether to include the scene at all, but it was ultimately necessary, because the reader needed an awareness that this sixty-year-old protagonist, who is a remarkably likable character, isn't some sort of saint; he is real, vulnerable, sexual, like any other man.  And I think understanding his internal battle adds to our appreciation of his anguish, for the woman he has formed a deep bond with is his own niece.

Now hopefully, I dealt with that sensitively, and while the developing obsessional relationship between these two consenting adults is not entirely healthy, their involvement seeks to harm no-one else, and it's our own narrow-mindedness as the reader, perhaps, which might object to the thought of these two having sex.

More recently, I've been adapting 'Attachment' to a radio play script, and this has given me the added difficulty of portraying sex, through dialogue and sound affects alone.  Given these would-be lovers are barely conscious there isn't a lot of dialogue in the novel, the scene is set through the prose, and so I fear I shall be left relying on sounds, as in, sex sound (or at least foreplay sounds) to convey this love scene in a radio drama version.  This indeed has presented me with a new challenge, how do I achieve this in a tasteful way?.

BBC Radio listeners do not always appreciate such subject matter.  Recently the corporation received several complaints about love scenes portrayed on The Archers, The Diary of Samuel Pepys, and a Woman's Hour drama, with one listener stating:  “Please can all the grunts and grinds of people humping each other stop.  We don’t need that – we’d rather hear the pigs doing it.”

The British public have always been famously prudish about sex and nudity in its serious form, with a preference to reduce the subject to the somewhat immature schoolboy humour of the Carry On tradition.

Back in April 1970 acting stars Susan Penhaligon and Michael Mackenzie set pulses racing and tongues wagging, when they dared to portray an authentic scene from Romeo and Juliet naked in bed, at the Connaught Theatre in Worthing. In total, there were ninety seconds of nudity within the two and a half hour performance, but local residents threatened to cause havoc with tomatoes and water pistols if the scene went ahead, such was the perception of an attack on Christian moral values.

In that same year The Sun newspaper introduced Page 3! The explicit objectification of bare breasts in their daily tabloid was popular enough to save it from declining sales. Clearly there has always been a strange, insidious double standard deep within the nation's collective unconscious, and one that's not at all healthy.  A mother breastfeeding a child on a train will still attract looks of disgust and condemnation!

It behoves all of us who work within the arts to try and educate society, and encourage exploration in a positive, healthy way.  For now, I shall return to agonising over the beautiful, yet problematic erotic scene in my script.

Please feel free to leave your comments, and any sensible tips or advice.

The 2013 Bad Sex in Fiction Award - It seems in some ways, our society has not moved on significantly from D H Lawrence's time.

It's that time of the year writers seem to dread.  Yes, it's the Bad Sex In Fiction awards, but this year it's got a few people challenging the validity of the somewhat unprestigious accolade.

Established in 1993, by the late Auberon Waugh, and organised by the Literary Review, in order to draw attention to the "crude, tasteless and often perfunctory use of redundant passages of sexual description in contemporary novels, and to discourage it", former nominees include such national treasures as, Newsnight's Paul Mason and Will Self (on three separate occasions); even J K Rowling was tipped for the award last year - not for a Harry Potter book, of course!! -but for her post-Potter novel "The Casual Vacancy".  As it happened, she didn't actually make the shortlist.


Previous winners of the Bad  Sex in Fiction award include:

1993: Melvyn Bragg, A Time to Dance

1994: Philip Hook, The Stonebreakers

1995: Philip Kerr, Gridiron

1996: David Huggins, The Big Kiss: An Arcade Mystery

1997: Nicholas Royle, The Matter of the Heart

1998: Sebastian Faulks, Charlotte Gray

1999: A. A. Gill, Starcrossed

2000: Sean Thomas, Kissing England[3]

2001: Christopher Hart, Rescue Me

2002: Wendy Perriam, Tread Softly[2]

2003: Aniruddha Bahal, Bunker 13

2004: Tom Wolfe, I Am Charlotte Simmons

2005: Giles Coren, Winkler[4]

2006: Iain Hollingshead, Twenty Something[5]

2007: Norman Mailer, The Castle in the Forest[6]

2008: Rachel Johnson, Shire Hell; John Updike, Lifetime Achievement Award

2009: Jonathan Littell, The Kindly Ones

2010: Rowan Somerville, The Shape of Her [7]

2011: David Guterson, Ed King[8]

2012: Nancy Huston, Infrared[9]

Alastair Campbell openly said he wanted to win it, in 2010.  His comment immediately disqualified him, the award is intended to shame and embarrass writers, and presumably their readers too. Campbell had made it to the shortlist, though, beating his former boss, Tony Blair, who had surprised many with his autobiographical account of his own sexual appetite.

Laurie Penny writes a compelling article in the New Statesman, this week, "In Defence of Bad Sex", suggesting the award is dated and priggish.  While we, as a nation, remain so inhibited about sex generally, and specifically, uncomfortable about portraying normal experiences of sex, she argues, young people will continue to develop their understanding about sex, from the increasingly hardcore sea of pornography, available so freely now on computers, tablets and phones.  You can read her full article here .

Neurological evidence reveals that women who are inhibited about sex, will tend to feel less confident in other areas of life, such as standing up for themselves, against oppressive men.  It is as if sexual confidence affects the actual architecture of the brain.  If a society effectively stops women talking about sex, and exploring normal, healthy consensual sex, those women seem to become easier to manipulate and exploit, and that certainly seems to have been the case for generations gone by.  If you make sex sinful, or even just mucky, women of all ages will be dissuaded from engaging in it, or even thinking about it, through shame.

Many would argue that the seemingly harmless, Bad Sex in Fiction award, plays into that agenda, to some degree.

D H Lawrence's 1928 novel "Lady Chatterley's Lover" is undoubtedly, the most famous book to have received an actual ban, in Britain, for its explicit sexual content.  It wasn't until 1960, thirty years after the author's death, that the public could buy a significantly censored edition of, what many consider to be a literary masterpiece, such was the determination of successive governments to control what art and literature ordinary people had access to.  There can be no doubt that those of less modest means had long been acquiring the book from Florence, and later France.


Back in 1929, a review by Edmund Wilson, praised "Lady Chatterley's Lover", for its attempt to explore sexuality with some degree of sensitivity and intelligence, recognising and admiring the challenge Lawrence had taken on:

"....The truth is simply, of course, that in English we have had, since the eighteenth century, no technique—no vocabulary even—for dealing with such subjects. The French have been writing directly about sex, in works of the highest literary dignity, ever since they discarded the proprieties of Louis XIV. They have developed a classical vocabulary for the purpose. And they have even been printing for a long time, in their novels, the coarse colloquial language of the smoking-room and the streets. James Joyce and D. H. Lawrence are the first English-writing writers of our own time to print this language in English; and the effect, in the case of Ulysses at least, has been shocking to English readers to an extent which must seem very strange to a French literary generation who read Zola, Octave Mirbeau and Huysmans in their youth. But, beyond the question of this coarseness in dialogue, we have, as I have intimated, a special problem in dealing with sexual matters in English. For we have not the literary vocabulary of the French. We have only the coarse colloquial words, on the one hand, and, on the other, the kind of scientific words appropriate to biological and medical books and neither kind goes particularly well in a love scene which is to maintain any illusion of glamor or romance.

Lawrence has here tried to solve this problem, and he has really been extraordinarily successful. He has, in general, handled his vocabulary well. And his courageous experiment, in Lady Chatterley’s Lover, should make it easier for the English writers of the future to deal more searchingly and plainly, as they are certainly destined to do, with the phenomena of sexual experience...."

As a writer myself, who largely navigates plot lines away from sexual encounters, I would say writing really well, about a sexual encounter, is as difficult as doing it well, in real life.  Sex is, by its very nature, often unchoreographed and a bit clunky, is the word I think Laurie Penny used. Few of us have a back catalogue of BAFTA worthy performances, but awkwardness doesn't stop lovers doing it, or enjoying it, and perhaps our slight discomfort in reading about sex, is partly to do with our own personal insecurities and hang ups.

Certainly, when I read through this year's nomination passages, I didn't think they were particularly badly written, it seems to be the actual content that offends judges at the Literary Review.  In some ways our society has not moved on significantly from Lawrence's time, it would seem.

Is BBC impartiality possible, when the Chair of the BBC Trust, was once the Chairman of the Conservative Party?

It has been reported, that staff at Number 10 are "furious" that senior BBC political presenter, Jeremy Paxman, dared to criticise David Cameron over comments the Prime Minister made about plans for a First World War centenary, likening the event to last year's Diamond Jubilee celebrations.  Paxman questioned the use of Cameron's idea to celebrate such a calamitous conflict in which millions of men were wounded, mentally and physically, and three quarters of a million, never returned home from.

On the popular Graham Norton Show, Paxman also said he agreed with some aspects of Russell Brand's comments, in a recent Newsnight interview, that people are "completely fed up with posturing politicians" and he believes MPs should be obliged to have done a proper job in the real world, before entering the House of Commons, so that they are more in touch with ordinary people's lives.  He suggested MPs talk "rubbish!" and the public, in fact, see through them, when they insist theirs is the only party which can solve all the problems society faces.  Not only was this greeted with rapturous audience applause, but his fellow guests, Dame Judi Dench, Sir Elton John and John Bishop can clearly be seen clapping too.  And I suspect this as much as anything, has irked government ministers, aware already of their unpopularity.  It may have particularly annoyed the Chair of the BBC Trust, Chris Patten, who was formerly the Chairman of the Conservative Party!

Patten was appointed to the position of BBC Trust Chair by David Cameron, on 1st May, 2011, with many alleging at the time, that he may have been purposefully positioned there, to make sure BBC coverage of the unpopular austerity agenda, avoided any criticism of the government.

Chris Patten, current Chair of BBC Trust, and inset image, in his Conservative Party days

The BBC themselves, made no attempt back in March of 2011 to hide the fact that Chris Patten remained very much "an old-fashioned Tory" in their original article which can be found  here.

There would seem to be some intolerance at present, of BBC personalities airing any sort of personal opinion which deviates from the official government position.

Aside from criticism of Newsnight's Russell Brand interview, and Paxman's own comments about the state of British Politics, the BBC appear to have come under pressure now to criticise the much liked presenter and naturalist, Chris Packham, for comments he made on Twitter about the government's controversial badger cull.  The Daily Telegraph reports:

He was also reprimanded for using “intemperate” language on his Twitter feed in the summer (@ChrisGPackham) after an inquiry was ordered by Lord Hall of Birkenhead, the BBC’s director general.

Mr Packham filed entries on his Twitter entry ¬- on which he says he is a “naturalist and BBC broadcaster” - as the badger cull was about to start in the summer.

He wrote: “Tonight could be the darkest for British wildlife that we have witnessed in our lives. That in spite of science and public will the wrath of ignorance will further bloody and bleed our countryside of its riches of life.

“That brutalist thugs, liars and frauds will destroy our wildlife and dishonour our nations reputation as conservationists and animal lovers”.

Naturalist, Chris Packham tweeted his views about the government's controversial badger cull

The British public has huge affection for the BBC, but it is starting to look more and more like an agent for government propaganda, with many now questioning its impartiality and wondering how viewers can express their own objection to this apparent right-wing bias.

Revolution in the UK is perhaps more likely to be driven by the Dramatic Arts, than politics

Most people want to live in a society, and want to bring their children up in a society, that's based on love, fairness and compassion, not hate, fear and oppression...

Russell Brand's ten minute, impassioned Newsnight interview with Jeremy Paxman, has 10 million YouTube views.  Almost as many as voted for David Cameron, at the 2010 General Election (10,706,647), have been interested in watching that single interview, during which the cult comedian calls for people to abandon the current political system and stand together to demand a fairer, more empathic and intelligently run society, which will meet the needs of the majority of people in society, rather than serving a select elite.

Paxman however, has certain sympathies with Brand's view.  While he believes people should vote in general elections, he recently confessed, "Russell Brand has never voted, because he finds the process irrelevant.  I can understand that: the whole green-bench pantomime in Westminster looks a remote and self-important echo chamber.  But it is all we have.  In one recent election, I decided not to vote, because I thought the choice so unappetising."

Earlier in the year, Ken Loach's iconic film, "The Spirit of 45", also captured the public's imagination. The movie looked back at a time in British history, when cooperation, collaboration and compassion were essential components to rebuilding society, following the Second World War.  Many now say we need to recapture those values and aspirations of a collective national spirit and identity, to work together, to solve the problems that our society faces today.  

How can it be, that in a society where some people are earning hundreds of thousands of pounds each year, over 500,000 people have had to turn to hand-outs from food banks, to feed their families; many of those are working adults, hit hard by the coalition's cuts to jobs and services.  This level of child poverty should not be happening in a rich country like Britain, it is surely a sign of government failure, and naturally, more and more people have become angry about the gaping inequality between rich and poor, which seems set to increase further, under the present administration.

Around 45 million people were eligible to vote at the last General Election, yet less than a quarter voted for David Cameron, and only 8,604,358 voted for Gordon Brown's New Labour. Following the expenses scandal, the banking crisis and the Lib Dems wholesale betrayal of their core voters, MPs are held in very low regard by the general public now, with many predicting an even poorer turnout come 2015, despite the unpopularity of the Coalition Government.

On the BBC's iconic political panel show, Question Time, invariably the guest whose answers chime most with the audience in the studio, and at home, is not a politician, but tends to be an actor or director, such as Ken Loach, Russell Brand or Brian Cox, or a writer such as Owen Jones or Mehdi Hasan.  More often than not, the whole of the rest of the panel, is made up from people on the right of politics (the Labour MP tends to be a New Labour politician, seldom someone from the left) and they're more likely to get jeered than applauded; the introduction of Twitter comments, increases still further, the opportunity to criticise the politicians.  It makes you wonder why they agree to go on the programme, because they sure aren't encouraging people to go out and vote for them!

The reality is, people just don't connect with politicians anymore; they don't respect them, they don't trust them and they won't vote for them, and this is especially true of younger voters, who do relate to Russell Brand's message, and this is a huge problem now, for politicians.  Where is their mandate to rule over us, when the majority of people haven't voted for them, and look even less likely to vote in the future.

As our children's generation matures, they want another way, they demand another way.  They don't idolise Margaret Thatcher or Tony Blair; far from it, more likely they despise the architects of this unjust, greed-obsessed culture they find themselves living in, MPs who themselves benefitted from free higher education out of taxpayers wages, now inflict tuition fees of £9,000 per year on those same workers' kids, who have studied hard to get a place at university, and dreamt of a decent future, with a rewarding job.  A classic case of  I'm alright Jack, pull up the ladder. 

Too many bright, working class teenagers are opting now, to go into jobs - often poor pay and conditions, minimum wage jobs - because they don't feel able to take on nearly £30,000 of tuition fees for a degree.  How can this possibly be fair!  People can see why the Conservatives, would welcome this, their numbers will surely dwindle as far-right, religious voters age and pass away. As society ultimately becomes more tolerant, more secular, clearly the Tories' days are numbered, so they might be just desperate to cling to power for as long as possible. But people can't understand why Labour ministers would also seek to discourage bright kids from poor backgrounds going into higher education, and that lack of difference between the main parties, and their failure to say, or do anything to protect and support those at the bottom, those families being hit so hard since 2010, is precisely why people have stopped voting.  To many, there seems to be no point.

Enthusiasm for a big sea change, is much more likely to come from the world of drama, art and music, as Brand's interview reveals.  We now need a collective drive forward, to engage and enlighten and involve the public, many of whom are probably desperate for a life free from anxiety and debt and despair.

We need films, plays, documentaries, TV dramas, novels, poems, songs, all addressing an urgent need for change, away from the exploitation of the poor, away from the destruction of the planet. Not another summer of love; how naive that turned out to be; simply getting stoned, taking your clothes off in a muddy field and dropping out of society, brings little benefit to the world, some say it made things worse. There was no plan, no strategy.  Getting out of your head, just allows the oppressors to take an even tighter grip, and you're powerless to stop them!  

What we need is a serious, intelligent, coordinated movement putting forward rational proposals for how we change society for our children, and their children.  Much more emphasis on the human need for family and community, belonging to something.  Education and science and the arts embraced for their own sake, for this is how we enrich society and give our lives meaning.  Less expectation for the individual to cope alone with stresses, such as illness, loneliness and financial worry.  Supporting the vulnerable and helping them to achieve a fulfilling existence, for when we cast out the needy, that impacts on the whole of society.  

Encouraging tolerance and respect and allowing people to express themselves as individuals, building an inclusive society, and if that involves taking your clothes off in a muddy field, as long as you're not harming anyone else in the process, well, so be it!

Russell Brand has today, written a compelling follow-up piece to the Newsnight interview, for the Guardian. You can read it here...