"Wisdom, compassion, and courage are the three universally recognised moral qualities of men" (and women)  Confucius

"Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgement that something else is more important than one's fear"  James Hollingworth

"All truth passes through three stages.  First, it is ridiculed.  Second, it is violently opposed.  Third, it is accepted as being self-evident."  (mis) attributed to Arthur Schopenhauer.

"You've got to spread joy up to the maximum.  Bring gloom down to the minimum.  Otherwise pandemonium ... Liable to walk upon the scene".  Bing Crosby sings

"You've got to accentuate the positive.  Eliminate the negative.  Latch onto the affirmative.  Don't mess with Mr In-Between".  Bing Crosby sings!

'Breaking Convention' - the fifth biennial international conference on psychedelics - took place at Greenwich University in London from 16th-18th August.  There were apparently 1,200 or so attendees for the 6 concurrent programmes - academic, workshop, performance, cinema, entertainment & installations - as well as an art exhibition.  I went primarily because it allowed me to hear pretty much all the relevant research groups in the UK present on their current findings.  As you can see from the other quite extensive writing about psychedelics on this website, I'm very interested in the encouraging emerging research highlighting potential therapeutic value of psychedelics.  Although I focussed on the academic programme, there was much too much even here to manage an ove

           The universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.   Eden Phillpotts

At the recent World Congress of Behavioural & Cognitive Therapies in Berlin, David Veale from King's College & the Maudsley reported on a randomised controlled trial of 'triple chronotherapy' for depression.

David pointed out that depression can come in all kinds of shapes & sizes, and this treatment probably works best in the subtype where circadian rhythms have become desynchronised.

This is the third & last day of the conference proper ...

More to follow   

Well this was a fascinating day ... I went to my friend James Bennett-Levy's fine symposium on "Self-practice/self-reflection (SP-SR) at 18: an experiential training strategy maturing into adulthood", then on to an interesting & helpful symposium discussing broader applications of Arnoud Arntz's imagery approaches - "Efficacy of imagery rescripting as a transdiagnostic intervention".  And to complete the morning's cornucopia I was back listening to James delivering a barn-storming plenary on "Personal practice: why therapists should walk the talk."  I sat with Judy, James's wife, and we considered standing to applaud at the end but decided this might be a bit over-the-top, even if richly deserved.