Category: Personal
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A week later
Really not an unsuccessful week: a good supervisory session, two colloquia, part of one good seminar – a trip to Lausanne to look into a new exchange partner for our department; a lot of complicated back and forth beforehand, because Switzerland no longer is part of the EU exchange system – did someone tell me…
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The hard part
I've become increasingly aware, in a somewhat embarrassed way, of the difference between psychologically recovering from irrational complexes that hamper us, that keep us from living – and actually, actively, doing things in the world, doing things in life. I mean, okay, I've always kind of stunk at this. My sister and brother will easily…
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Solstice
In the dark of the year, I had the task of introducing one of our series of movie musicals at a local café. We'd chosen Meet Me in St. Louis – always an odd one: sentimental, structured – but at the same time there are strange, dark eruptions into the story: the youngest daughter in…
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Men in autumn • fragments • a flash
I haven’t written here for a while… somewhat preoccupied, fairly busy. Walking through what feels like several lives at once: the university (with various changes in upper-level policy – an annoying time for British universities, as upper-level business savages try to extend control over non-business systems), my analysands (and another new one, and new chairs…
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Amidst
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…
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Mid–
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…
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Joins
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…
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Cities, days: back in August…
So… after my summer was partly derailed by Jung-Institut exams, then the flu and a month of its aftermath – I chose to travel to København (Copenhagen, to you in the back) for my first-ever conference of IAAP, the international Jungian organization; but Stockhom first, for fun, with Annick; and then Manchester, for Pride weekend.…
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[Panic / anger / calm: shifting grounds]
[a] Friday. I am upset. No, that's not quite true: I am not pleased, but… it is as though the negative emotions are at least partly in brackets. I can see myself panicking a bit, angry and disoriented – but, perhaps because this is how psychoanalysis can work, the emotions are understandable but don't quite…
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Beautiful men
After a couple of weeks with a lot of teaching and students; and after a lot of promises to continue editing the anthology, and studying for my Jung-Institut exams – about half of those promises broken, but I do try to keep going; and after somewhat warmer (though not actually warm) weather; and after a…
Paul Attinello 