One of my most popular posts is about how narcissism is a subset of autism. Since then I realized narcissism and autism are both about being terrible at setting boundaries. Autism is a disorder of ...

Last week I wrote about Lindsay Clancy’s postpartum psychosis. I was excited about the case because the mental health profession would be challenged. Now, after two weeks of reading transcripts and ...

When my kids were young I yelled. Just a little. But then I read that any yelling at all permanently damages kids. I thought: Really? One time? That’s weird. Because when I was a kid, a yelling day ...

In the 80s my teacher asked, “How did it happen that the Republican party ended slavery yet Black people are Democrats?” That was his introduction to the process of party realignment in the US. In the ...

I’ve been on Instagram posting my drawings and stories. But that lasted about a month before my kids asked me to remove posts they didn’t want their friends to see. Then they reconsidered: “You know ...

After 20 years of blogging, learning to do academic research was a steep learning curve. People told me to ask for help from professors at Harvard because they’d feel obligated to help me because I’m ...

John Gallagher wrote his dissertation about how people with a large following online relate to comments from their audience. Over many years he interviewed people who were top Redditors, top Amazon ...

I’m going to stop being so transactional. This means that I’m not going to be as pissy as usual when your comments don’t come as frequently as they used to. Well. Hold on. Right now I spend half my ...

No one has devised a perfect questionnaire for determining a narcissist, which is why the New York Times makes the argument for cutting narcissism from the DSM. We know what narcissism looks like: ...

Women who are really good at school think a great way to celebrate that is to go to medical school. People admire you! It’s great money! And there’s flexible hours for moms! But this is what really ...

US scientists are scared to talk about differences between male and female brains, probably because it will get them fired. The loudest voices say there cannot be male and female brains because there ...

Note from Penelope: This is a guest post of sorts. I asked Whitney to annotate one of my blog posts because I want to better understand the white privilege on my blog. I also thought this would be a ...