Paul Attinello

Author: paulattinello

  • Insight

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    paulattinello
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    How unexpected – some of the events and understandings of the past two months – with those of the past five or six years, with those of the past thirty-one years, and even with those of the past fifty-seven years – seem to have turned a narrowly configured corner, one that leads from the the…

  • Temporal anomalies

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    paulattinello
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    (… you know… as in Star Trek, I suppose.) So, several weeks of the stress but not really misery, chaos but not really feeling frantic, the Stäbler book – working on it but not fast enough – and many smaller demands, extra classes coming out of nowhere, paperwork, and so on and so on. With…

  • The party

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    paulattinello
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    And so… a birthday party for Andrew, thrown mostly by his partner Michael and a number of helpful friends, in their large house. With many people from different places, who have different styles… lots of fun, the usual rambunctious cheer in some rooms, quieter and more relaxed in others, and a lot of talking and…

  • Downs… and ups

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    paulattinello
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    Zürich. Küsnacht. Jung-Institut. Two and a bit out of three weeks. I do seem to be emotionally volatile while I'm here… anxiety over my ability to become an analyst, excitement over new ideas – or, as you'll see, anger over new ideas – plumbing unexpected depths… Well, the past week was a rough one. Both…

  • Taut

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    paulattinello
    in

    It has felt as though I'm living about four lives – and am able to comfortably manage, say, about two… university marking and administration with the year abroad, HIV patient group and clarifying everything for other people to take charge of parts of it, training at the Jung-Institut and trying to get into colloquia, schedule…

  • Amidst

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    paulattinello
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    Three psychoanalysis clients!… uh, patients? Analysands? And those terms: clients is too business-y of course; and after all the arguments in the 1980s in the AIDS community (the ones that created the term 'PWA'), I'm not comfortable calling anyone a 'patient'. Analysand… an exact and respectable term. Unfortunately a rather long one, and one most…

  • Mid–

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    paulattinello
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    Solstice night, nadir of the year. In the middle of the long night: the point where our day goes down to seven hours, then the direction reverses and the day rapidly lengthens… This winter I seem to be waking in the middle of the night – not a new thing: since my 2009 stroke I…

  • Joins

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    paulattinello
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    I sleep a lot in the past weeks… not in some sort of avoidance, just a quiet dream of winter… I keep being aware of the joins, the cracks, between the great blocks of things that can be seen: if when I was younger a great deal of my thinking, and ultimately my research, tended…

  • Recovering

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    paulattinello
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    Today's two-hour lecture was probably the last AIDs activity for a while… except of course for catching up with some counseling. Framed with a great deal of self-clarification – I felt the need to explain to my students that I was tired out by the subject… And then did parts of the 'AIDS Rage' lecture,…

  • Backwash

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    paulattinello
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    So, as the events and discussion around AIDS gradually dwindle… even after World AIDS Day, there are still backwashes (or perhaps: backdrafts?) from all these memories and feelings. Monday was the patient group discussion with graduate students in clinical psychology – which is always both easier and deeper than our more usual presentations for medical…