Gavin Francis

speaker

523 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jun 2026 last heard 13 Jun

Gavin Francis’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 1.

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London Review Bookshop Podcast · Gavin Francis & Philippe Sands: The Unfragile Mind · 13 Jun 2026 podcast

Winnicott wrote that we could say that psychological problems are a problem of development.

And if you can go back to the point where the development was stopped and allow it to flow, then the problem itself dissipates and disappears.

Right.

We've run out of time already.

So this is a favour Philippe is doing for me because I chaired him for his Pinochet book twice last year in Edinburgh.

And in the final event, I said, we've got 30 seconds left, Philippe, and he talked for 11 minutes.

LAUGHTER

Look at the faces in a crowd.

Each one conceals a unique and intimate human drama.

Every life is difficult sometimes, and to practice medicine is to be given the uncommon privilege of seeing through the facades we hide behind.

This is a book about states of mind and how we make sense of them.

Most categories of mental health and illness are controversial because they're subjective,

evolved over centuries through conversations between doctors and patients, patients and patients, and doctors and doctors rather than arrived at through objective scientific tests.

Patient means sufferer and suffering comes to us all.

In the course of my work, I meet people whose lives feel blighted by feelings of anxiety and fear, who are depressed or manic, who have been traumatised or abused, who are psychotic or addicted.

It's work that obliges me every day to ask questions about the nature of consciousness, of mood, and the elements that go into making a meaningful life.

This book sets out with a particular premise that there are landscapes of the mind and to practice medicine, journeying with the stories of others is to be a kind of adventurer through its many realms.

There are many ways of thinking, feeling and being and doctors explore them through conversations in the consultation room.

The word doctor means teacher or guide.

Sometimes I guide my patients through landscapes well known to me, but other times it's my patients who guide me.

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