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As Rhoda Feng acknowledges in her review (June 28), the concept of gaslighting is controversial, in part because its psychodynamics are complex and often not fully conscious. Fifteen years after [...]

Veronica O'Keane's excellent review of Why We Remember by Charan Ranganath (May 3) raises several intriguing points. Disagreeing with Ranganath, she correctly emphasizes 'the complex interplay of emotion and memory'. [...]

The surprising controversy over who wrote the works of Shakespeare illustrates the tension between simplicity and complexity. I knew that Sigmund Freud supported the 1920 theory that Edward de Vere, [...]

Janet Todd (May 17) tells us that the deservedly eminent Aphra Behn was 'the first female literary professional'. So what does that make Christine de Pizan (1364-c.1430)? After her husband's [...]

A fascinating part of the story of the Tokyo tribunal ('Verdicts of history', April 19, and Letters, May 3) was the role of the US army psychiatrist Daniel S. Jaffe, [...]

Betty Milan (reviewed by Peter Salmon, March 8) believes that she benefited from her analysis with Jacques Lacan. Why, we might ask. Is it possible that a masochistic streak was [...]

"The upswing: How America came together and how we can do it again" is a book by Robert Putnam that examines trends in economic, political, social, and cultural aspects of American life over the past 125 years. Putnam argues that the United States experienced a period of progress and social cohesion during the Progressive movement, but has since declined in terms of inequality, political polarization, social dislocation, and cultural narcissism. The book explores the shift from a collective "we" orientation to a more individualistic mindset and offers insights into the role of religion, political polarization, and social justice movements in shaping American society. Putnam suggests that by learning from history and working collectively, America can regain a sense of unity and social progress. [Extracted from the article]

The year 2020 saw the world's worst pandemic since the 'Spanish' flu of 1918. It also marked the 400th anniversary of the first English translation (1) of a book set [...]

William Cecil, Lord Burghley (1520-1598), was Queen Elizabeth's powerful principal adviser for most of her reign. He had profound scholarly interests, read several languages, collected a vast library, and was [...]

Skeptical scholars of the authorship issue sometimes ask, rhetorically, 'What difference does it make who wrote Shakespeare? It makes no difference to me.' Readers of the present essay may likewise [...]

In April 2020 I found myself coping with COVID-19 by retreating to the 14th century--for the first time I read Boccaccio's Decameron, set during the devasting pandemic of 1348, which [...]

Kevin Gilvary, Fictional Lives of Shakespeare. New York: Routledge, 2018. Reviewed by Richard M. Waugaman, MD This sobering book validates Mark Twain's quip comparing Shakespeare biographies to brontosaur skeletons in [...]

Shakespeare and Psychoanalytic Theory, by Carolyn E. Brown, London: Bloomsbury, 2015. One might form the overall impression from this book that psychoanalytic Shakespeareans tend to begin with one or another [...]

This article studies jealousy in Shakespeare's Othello, showing that knowledge of the true author's life experiences with the extremes of pathological jealousy will deepen our understanding and appreciation of this [...]

The Unconscious in Shakespeare's Plays. by Martin S. Bergmann London: Karnac. 2013. It was an enormous loss to psychoanalysis when the eminent and beloved Martin S. Bergmann died at the [...]

Published by Oxford University Press in 2014, Forensic Shakespeare will interest Oxfordians for several reasons. New discoveries about Shakespeare often expose further weaknesses in the traditional authorship theory, and inadvertently [...]

At the conference on 'Shakespeare and the Problem of Biography' at the Folger Shakespeare Library in the spring of 2014, Lena Orlin thought she had an explanation for Shakspere's great [...]

To my knowledge, this article is the first to link this anonymous 1578 poem with Edward de Vere. A detailed examination of the poem and its literary allusions suggests that [...]

I feel deeply honored to be selected as this year's speaker. * It was 35 years ago that my wife Elisabeth and I attended our first Frieda Fromm-Reichmann lecture, when [...]

What accounts for the astonishing longevity of belief in the legendary author of Shakespeare s works. Because we re right, say Stratfordians 'and because there's no question whatsoever that Shakespeare [...]

Edward de Vere marked 20 psalms in the Sternhold and Hopkins Whole Book of Psalms (WBP) that was bound with his Geneva Bible. These 20 psalms are proving to be [...]

David P. Gontar Hamlet Made Simple and Other Essays Nashville, TN: New English Review Press, 2013 David Gontar has written a fascinating book on Shakespeare, that all Oxfordians will want [...]