author
Paul Bousfield
1880–1957
A British physician and popular psychology writer, he brought early psychoanalytic ideas to general readers in clear, practical books about the mind, feeling, and self-deception. His work often tried to connect medical thinking with everyday emotional life.
1 Audiobook
The omnipotent self, a study in self-deception and self-cure
by Paul Bousfield
About the author
Trained as a doctor, he specialized in nervous diseases and wrote a series of books that explored psychology for non-specialist readers. His best-known works include The Elements of Practical Psycho-Analysis, Pleasure and Pain, The Mind and Its Mechanism, Sex and Civilization, and The Omnipotent Self.
His writing sits in the early 20th-century moment when psychoanalysis, neurology, and popular self-understanding were beginning to overlap. Rather than writing only for specialists, he explained big questions about instinct, habit, emotion, self-deception, and mental conflict in a direct, accessible way.
Reliable sources confirm his dates as 1880–1957 and show a substantial body of published work, but detailed biographical information about his private life is limited in the sources available here. For readers coming to him now, the interest lies in seeing how an earlier generation tried to make sense of personality, suffering, and the hidden motives behind human behavior.