James Hamilton on Sport History and Psychology
In January, London’s School of Life held what it called “The Self Help Summit.†The Summit, culmination of years of psychotherapists’ frustration at what they call the Self Help Industry, brought together a remarkable range of (tongue very much in cheek) the usual suspects: Philippa Perry, Alain de Botton, Richard Wiseman, Mark Vernon, Frank Furedi,…
I don’t have heroes. Certainly, I don’t have footballing ones: any heroism that footballers have committed has been tangental to the actual game. Harry Gregg, yes. Bryan Robson, no. But for all that, there are people in football whose success I’ve an emotional commitment to. I haven’t often found myself around these people: it’s not…
This weekend, Sir Alex Ferguson will surpass Sir Matt Busby’s record as the longest serving manager in Manchester United history. He’ll go on to serve his full quarter century next year, and eventually retire (or die in office) as the greatest manager of modern times. However, Sir Alex did not have the opportunity to manage…
When I heard the news that the Russian Federation would host the 2018 World Cup despite a near-perfect bid from England, I remembered my Russian. My Russian was one of the very few great men I consider myself to have met. You won’t have heard of him, and I won’t give you his name. Our…
I’ve put together reading lists before – see here. This one will overlap the earlier list, but is meant to provide a number of quick but intelligent ways into the whole brain/mind/therapy/neuroscience subject spread. As such, many of these books will be familiar, some perhaps not. Amazon UK links presented where possible. The Human Brain…
Metatone raised three questions in comments on my earlier post here : 1. Is the common factor in talk therapies that work the regular contact with a relatively non-judgemental/sympathetic person who seems to be paying attention? 2. Is the common feature of all the talking therapies that they represent a process (thinking of process over…
This post is in response to part of Metatone’s comment on my earlier post here Sport got there first, of course, and got there many decades earlier. Even before Freud and Kraepelin had begun constructing their contrasting disease models of mental illness, athletes and footballers had come to a basic conception of positive psychology. It…
Usually, it starts with an email: “James/Hi James/Dear James: I’ve been reading some sport psychology textbooks and it’s all rubbish. Please could you point me to the real deal?” These emails are hard to answer. Because what my interlocutor has noticed is that the content of sport psychology is unacademic, unproven, shallow, and all too…
The first thing Capello said on becoming England manager was that when an Englishman pulled on his international shirt, he lost all the confidence he felt at his club: he played in fear. The task for Capello was to create the conditions for confidence that already existed at Chelsea, Manchester United and Liverpool. And in…
I’d like to thank Rob Marrs for putting me onto this particular story. I don’t follow European football particularly well, and the Deisler situation had completely passed me by. I doubt very much I can do more with it than rehearse the usual things, but here’s what I make of it nonetheless. Depression is “my”…