Seamus O’Mahony
Articles by Seamus O’Mahony
2021
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Biography
The Anti-Freud
Dr Trotter challenged Freud, asserting that ‘all human psychology … must be the psychology of associated man, since man as a solitary animal is unknown…
2017
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Science / Human Sciences
Compassion, Empathy, Flapdoodle
Neuroscientific speculation has escaped from the laboratory and is now the rickety foundation for scores of bestselling, populist books. The sceptical writer and journalist Steven…
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Science / Human Sciences
A Postmodern Disease
Up to 1 per cent of the population may have coeliac disease but many more have self-diagnosed themselves as gluten-sensitive. Is gluten sensitivity based on…
2016
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Science / Human Sciences
Dum Spiro Spero
Many patients with a debilitating terminal disease might, one would think, be glad to hear their time is short. Still, ignoring the statistics, oncologists will…
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World Art / Culture
Lord of the Flies
Jerry Coyne’s shouty polemic against religion, and against the possibility of any accommodation between science and religious belief, is largely an attack on creationism and…
2015
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World Art / Culture
Truculent Priest
In a series of radical critiques published in the 1970s Ivan Illich questioned educational practice, managerialism and the medical profession. Though he could be arrogant,…
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Irish Art / Culture
Working Class Heroes
The ghosted autobiography of Roy Keane and a biography of England’s 1966 World Cup golden boy Bobby Moore illustrate hugely contrasting personalities, but also the…
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Science / Human Sciences
Below Extinction’s Alp
‘The Hard Conversation’ is what happens when a doctor reveals to a patient the no longer avoidable truth. But perhaps society should also have a…
2014
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World Art / Culture
The Talking Cure
Sigmund Freud did not care greatly for his patients, and learning and teaching were more to his taste than helping and healing. Nevertheless, psychoanalysis has…
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Science / Human Sciences
Complications
Surgery, and perhaps particularly neurosurgery, can be profoundly rewarding. But there is always the possibility of mistakes, those little slips that can lead to disaster…
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Science / Human Sciences
How Scientific Inquiry Works
Postmodern critics of science have sometimes argued that it is a ‘narrative’ like any other and cannot be privileged over other narratives, for example alternative…
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Irish Art / Culture
Words At Will
To get into the best English society, Oscar Wilde thought, one must either feed people or shock people. And so, while they fed him, he…
2013
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Science / Human Sciences
Licking Death
Cancer is a serious business, and also big business, particularly in the US. But ‘declaring war’ on it is like declaring war on death. Our…
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Guilty Truant
A biography of the celebrated writer and director Jonathan Miller finds a man who has never forgiven himself for abandoning his first career in medicine.