Ideas & Reflections

A North Sea Memoir

Living in the afterbirth of the Second World War

Clem Henricson

Available to download in full as PDF here

This memoire traces the development of the sensibility of a daughter of an unlikely marriage between an English schoolteacher and a Swedish army officer in the aftermath of the Second World War.

It follows conflicted lives across two countries and two generations, from the birth of the daughter, through her formative years to self realisation against a backdrop of over powering parental myth.

Morality and the Human Condition

Clem Henricson

Available to download in full as PDF here

Examining morality against the backdrop of neurological science, this essay challenges received perceptions of morality as underwritten by empathy. Instead the argument is made that morality holds the reins for multiple impulses including, as well as empathy, drives associated with power, sex, self-preservation and the assertion of the ego and identity.  Morality, it is argued, is not a simple promoter of the social instincts, but rather a manager of the human condition in all its complexity and volatility.

Afterthoughts

Reflections on the texture of life after 60

Clem Henricson

Available to download in full as PDF here

These are some compressed diaried musings on the shifts in feelings and living for someone moving past her sell by date - with a familiar dose of kicking and screaming.

It is not a retrospective commentary on the life that went before - or on the loving, warm relations with her family and friends who still surround her today. The intensity and ongoing nature of those relationships preclude dissection.

Making Space for Our Melancholy

Clem Henricson

Available to download in full as PDF here

The article critiques the current preoccupation with the notion of happiness and upbeat living. It explores the universal nature of melancholy within the human psyche identifying significant implications for the assessment and support of wellbeing. The contention is that melancholy is over pathologised and that there is a universal psycholical link between it and the lifelong human experience of 'detachment', including experience of biological, psychological, social and environmental loss and change. The case is made for the acceptance of melancholy feelings as an important feature of human conception and identity. Working towards this end, there are proposals for offering social and cultural space for melancholy in relation to the arts, the environment, living expectations and the assessment of wellbeing.