Category: Psychology
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Third week
The last of three weeks in Zürich is ending – drained, tired. It was less dramatic than the middle week: but with some interesting class discussions about why this work would feel dramatic to many of the students – not merely the pragmatic pressures of full days and full-on work, but the psychology of constantly…
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Addressed to the passions
(If you don't know that phrase, it is from one of the funniest and most touching of essays by Max Beerbohm, 'A Clergyman.' I suggest you find it and read it.) An intense week… after another intense week, but this one was very different…. Well, for four days, at least: verve, intensity, demands on time…
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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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To Züri
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by
A busy, rapidly moving ten days or so, resulting in numerous things done – patients, classes, editing, emails – and also at some points just stopping, almost startled that I didn't want to work on the next thing. My new version of procrastination, I think: something barer, simpler – with far less anxiety. Perhaps this…
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Evening, station
Arriving on the evening train home from Sheffield – after a day with emails, meetings, a lecture, a sandwich on the midday train to Sheffield, where my analyst kindly travels to see me weekly. The train is on time, 8:47, or a bit earlier, walking out of the station, everyone bumping along, some suitcases. At…
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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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Rocky Horror
Between Christmas and New Year… Tonight we showed yet another musical at the Tyneside Café, our regular Sunday night event, which is linked to teaching my course on musicals – something I'm teaching for the first time in ten years, to my surprise, as I discovered when I looked through old records. Musicals are, to…
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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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Trains • Perelandra • Complex
[Fragments from several days, several locations. A certain connectedness – but be ready for jumps in continuity: like a student film.] A lot of train trips the past few months: my analyst lives (fortunately very near the train station) in Leicester, about three and a half hours away… my 'local' supervisor in York (i.e. closer…
Paul Attinello 