Author: paulattinello
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Twenty-five miserable things about me
Having lost the chance to study in Zürich this year – yes, it will happen; but next February at best, more plausibly next June – I'm still going to start analysis in the next few weeks, and am meeting two prospective analysts this week. I keep thinking that what is really the central 'presenting' problem…
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Strategic retreat
I won't send in my application today for the Jung-Institut; the finances are just too uncertain. I suppose I'm trying to actually take the intelligent (!) advice I gave David R.: to not be too hasty to advance on a new path if the resources aren't ready yet. It's a bit frustrating, and I feel…
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My mind beats on
A difficult day after a difficult night: not much sleep resulted in a chaos of thoughts, worries. Can I really afford this, this adventure in Küsnacht? Is it a good time to be starting such a program, am I sure that I can do the work, that I won't tire and fail? Of course I…
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The Joy of Malevolence
After being split between days of work – teaching, students, paperwork – and nights of reading and thinking about my glorious future as a Jungian analyst, I grabbed a book off the shelf to read in between things: Thomas Disch's story collection Getting Into Death. This is of course the same brilliant Tom Disch who…
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After Küsnacht
So: I am back from a week in Küsnacht, a posh southern suburb of Zürich right on the Zürichsee (where, as it happens, Tina Turner lives – and no, I didn't see her), where I studied at the Jung-Institut for a week… It was good; some of it was great. And yes, I'd like to…
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Einpacken
As I finish packing, many thoughts and images cross through my mind, past and future. And one from the present: dismayed horror at my clothes – do I really look that shabby, that dull? But I suppose I haven't much liked the way I dress, or the way I look, for about six years –…
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Electric
In the midst of packing and printing maps to Zürich, and rather grandly ignoring St. Valentine's Day, and reading bits of Jung and von Franz – and, not least, despairing over a hideous eruption of lint all over my best black jeans, which I'm trying to fix late into the night – I had a…
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Sub specie aeternitatis
I am very, very lucky – despite hosts of administrative things happening this week, most have gone off well; most answers to e-mails today were yes, okay, done; and I don't leave for Zürich until Sunday. Therefore there is some quiet time to finish reading some of the Jung I wanted to read before leaving;…
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Projective
A burst of anxieties and slight despondencies: after several days of talking to students about their futures, and in a few painful cases having to tell them that their marks were not high enough to allow them to go abroad as exchange students – which feels like telling them: no adventures for you, my boy…
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Multitasking
Apologies for not posting. Many students, classes, administrative e-mails flying back and forth; and preparing to go to Zürich next week to study with the Jungians. (As in the Gilbert and Sullivan tune: "mystical Germans, who preach from ten 'til four"… though that was written too early to refer to Jung.) But life isn't chaotic…
Paul Attinello 