The Psychology of Modern Life:
Meaning, Relationships, and Personal Development.
A hub for understanding how how people search for purpose, navigate complexity, and make sense of themselves in a rapidly changing world.
Across cultures and professions, people are grappling with the same core questions:
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How do I live meaningfully?
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Why does modern life feel so overwhelming?
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What does it mean to be a self in a world that never stops demanding attention?
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How do relationships stay alive in a digital age?
This page brings together the ideas that animate my writing and speaking on modern psychological life. It draws on Jung, Winnicott, Hollis, contemporary research, and the lived realities of those seeking deeper connection and clarity in an accelerated, mediated world.
The Search for Meaning in a Secular Age
Many people find themselves navigating a sense of fragmentation or loss of direction. The traditional anchors — religion, community, long-term work structures — have weakened. Meaning is often pursued through work, relationships, identity, or productivity, yet rarely satisfied there. Depth psychology helps reveal what sits behind these longings and why modern life intensifies them.
Relationships in a Culture of Convenience
Technology offers connection without friction, intimacy without vulnerability, and communication without embodiment. The ease of this can quietly reshape expectations of real relationships, which remain necessarily messy, demanding, and unpredictable. Understanding these tensions has become essential for couples, families, workplaces, and communities. For further exploration, see the broader cultural framing in The Digitally Extended Self.
Navigating Transitions and Turning Points
Periods of disruption like midlife, opportunities to alter one's identity, career change, crisis, and breakdown often feel like personal failure instead of natural developmental processes. A depth psychological approach reframes these moments not as derailments but as invitations to reorient.
The Modern Self
The contemporary self is pulled between visibility and privacy, performance and authenticity, ambition and exhaustion. Digital culture amplifies these tensions by rewarding presentation over presence and speed over reflection. These pressures shape behaviour, wellbeing, and the emotional tone of organisations.
This links closely with the ideas explored in Leadership, Emotional Intelligence & Technology, where these same dynamics appear in teams and workplaces.
Inspirational Keynotes for Any Occasion
Whether you’re running an annual conference, leadership away day, cultural gathering, festival, or professional event, these themes can be shaped into engaging and meaningful keynote sessions. Drawing on contemporary psychology, depth psychology, and over two decades of clinical experience, I help audiences explore what it means to live, work, and relate with greater clarity and purpose.
Core Articles on this Theme
Below are selected essays and articles that explore the psychology of AI and the changing relational landscape in greater depth. These pieces expand the ideas introduced here and link to the wider conversation about technology, the self, and contemporary mental health.
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AI, Psychotherapy and the Digitally Extended Self: Though AI-focused, this article explores identity, emotional regulation, and relational complexity — central themes in modern psychological life.
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The Digitally Extended Self:This hub page looks at how digital mediation shapes identity, attention, and emotional experience — directly relevant to the modern self.—
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Leadership, Emotional Intelligence & Technology:Because the modern self does not exist separately from organisational life, this page expands on how these dynamics appear in workplaces and leadership contexts.
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Articles Archive: This is where readers can find your essays on midlife, digital culture, identity, psychological transitions, and the search for meaning.
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You can also follow my Substack to keep up with all my writings on this and similar topics.
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