All In The Mind

We tend to assume that once we are adults there are aspects of our personalities that never alter. But a huge new re-analysis of more than 200 studies has found that therapy can change your personality in just a few weeks. The idea of therapy is to make you feel happier, and to help you find a way of resolving your problems. But as Professor Brent Roberts from the University of Illinois reveals, it can also change our personalities in surprising ways.Over 25 years ago as a junior doctor, Tom Solomon soon learnt that a patient on his ward, the children's author Roald Dahl, was fascinated by the brain. Then years later, away from his day job as a neurologist at Liverpool University, he decided to trace the influence of that interest on Dahl's writing. Last year he recounted it in a book which has now been adapted into a stage show for this year's Edinburgh Fringe - Roald Dahl's Marvellous Medicine. He tells Claudia Hammond how Dahl's interest in the brain began with an accident.The final Insiders' Guide to gett