Paul Attinello

Category: Psychology

  • Last days

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    paulattinello
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    It is – probably – the second-to-the-last day of real summer; tomorrow is probably, as it were, the closing firework display of good weather. Pleasant that it will be a Sunday, after Rumana's big party tonight. Of course the weather forecast from Monday onwards, and knowledge of how North Sea weather goes, gives just a…

  • The Gap

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    paulattinello
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    [This was written some days ago, in a dark mood… a mood partly generated by some of my experiences this last trip to Zürich; not because anything bad actually happened, but instead because of the combination of wrestling with certain concepts, and also working my way through unexpectly painful exercises where I wrote about things…

  • Contests

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    paulattinello
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    My last exam, in analytic implications of fairy tales, passed – at least in this group: that is, four, of the eight for the first half of the training. Dramatic: facing one of the most famous living analysts, a third-generation student of von Franz. The pleasant look – she likes me, we have talked –…

  • Gifts

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    paulattinello
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    Again, in Zürich/Küsnacht at the Jung-Institut, I keep intermittently experiencing myself as bitter, irritable, critical, unfair. Sigh. It's hard to disentangle or clarify this… as always. It doesn't feel as though it's all quite so maddening this time, though – and, also as usual, a number of people obviously experience me as pleasant, fun, even kindly…

  • Changes and recoveries

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    paulattinello
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    A remarkable analysis session today… after feeling stuck for some weeks, rapid inner change and reflection. I walked away thinking of fun house mirrors – how one inevitably looks at oneself and the world through all kinds of distortions; and the power of analysis is the increasing ability to sense the distortions, to become easily…

  • An unfinished fairy tale…

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    paulattinello
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    [My analyst told me about a brilliant exercise they did at the Jung-Institut in the 1980s – something we should do again, I think: write a fairy tale. I started this one last fall: it aims for some sort of journey or change… I haven't written more on this one; I may put it aside…

  • Learning and insight

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    paulattinello
    in

    Another day of reading, study, writing – broken up by lunch with a pleasant guy who is recently diagnosed HIV+, who wanted to talk about what he is going through, plus our normal HIV patient presentation to the medical students. Much study and writing is relatively continuous, work-like… but sometimes it is like a light…

  • … double vision…

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    paulattinello
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    It is years since I've seen this… A few days ago I got the DVD of the 1993 film Fearless, with its brilliant combination of the easy-going, handsome yet immensely skilled Jeff Bridges, and endlessly eerie/existentialist Australian director Peter Weir… and of course Rosie Perez and Isabella Rossellini, who also become very important to you…

  • Balance

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    paulattinello
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    Almost too faint, too evanescent, to write about – You know how it is, when you go through a day, or more, on what seems a different pattern: today was busy, one thing after another. Up early for the delivery man to pick up my passport renewal, rapidly reworking lists of compositions for an article…

  • Issuing a retraction

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    by

    paulattinello
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    I find myself uneasy with one of my previous blog posts. A few weeks ago, I was in New York. Frank Oteri wrote a blog entry on our conversation; he was upset that I had given up on composing. I defended myself… but the truth is, although I thought I was clear on my stance and…