Slavery, circumcision, and the male fear of nudity 24 June 2024 Posted by: Michael H Hallett Category: History , Sexuality , No Comments When working with shame—particularly sexual shame—we continually encounter manifestations of the fear of being seen naked. For men at least, this fear is linked to ancestral traumas around slavery and circumcision. The […]
Hieroglyphics, hemispheric dominance, and polarised thinking 3 November 2023 Posted by: Michael H Hallett Category: History , No Comments In the 1820s, French philologist and orientalist Jean-François Champollion made a critical breakthrough in deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphics. This mostly forgotten event provides us with a clear example of the effect of hemispheric dominance—the pre-eminence of left-brain, […]
The god of patriarchy is an effigy of the Bronze Age nomadic warrior 1 September 2023 Posted by: Michael H Hallett Category: History , Patriarchy , No Comments The Book of Genesis tells us that “God created man in his own image” (1:27). The historical and psychological reality is diametrically opposite: man created God in […]
The 1960s Sexual Revolution – breaking mass sexual repression 18 August 2023 Posted by: Michael H Hallett Category: History , Sexuality , No Comments My attention has recently been drawn to the 1960s Sexual Revolution, an event that has largely receded out of memory and is mostly remembered through the occasional popular song on the […]
Measuring shame – Wilhelm Reich’s 1930s oscillograph experiments 8 July 2023 Posted by: Michael H Hallett Category: Anxiety , History , Sexuality , Shame , No Comments Unconscious shame may seem like a vague, subjective concept. In the 1930s, Wilhelm Reich conducted experiments using an oscillograph showing that not only was shame—particularly sexual shame—measurable, but […]
The Architect of Desire – generational trauma from the Gilded Age 9 December 2020 Posted by: Michael H Hallett Category: Arts , Generational trauma , History , No Comments On the night of 25 June 1906, architect Stanford White was murdered at the rooftop restaurant of New York’s Madison Square Gardens. The subsequent trial revealed […]
Edward Carpenter and Covid-19 – civilization is the disease 2 December 2020 Posted by: Michael H Hallett Category: Arts , History , Mother wound , No Comments In 1899, Edward Carpenter wrote a book called Civilization: its cause and cure, in which he argued that civilization is a disease no society has ever survived. Civilization […]
The objectification of women happened at the dawn of patriarchy 9 December 2019 Posted by: Michael H Hallett Category: History , Mother wound , Patriarchy , No Comments There is a common belief that viewing porn conditions men to objectify women, turning them into emotionless sex objects. This is a fallacy. The objectification of women […]
Traumatisation of the feminine created patriarchy, not the other way round 30 November 2019 Posted by: Michael H Hallett Category: Arts , History , Mother wound , Patriarchy , No Comments In a post a few months ago I posed the question, Does patriarchy traumatise the feminine? At the time, I was pretty certain that […]
Does patriarchy traumatise the feminine? 15 August 2019 Posted by: Michael H Hallett Category: Arts , History , Mother wound , Patriarchy , No Comments Edwin Longsden Long’s 1875 painting, The Babylonian Marriage Market, is monumental in more ways than one. Firstly, in size: the painting measures 10 feet by 5 feet 8 inches. Secondly, […]