In a few days I go to Zürich for another three-week study period at the Jung-Institut. This is also the time when I finally do entrance interviews – six interviews with three analysts – to see if I can become a fully matriculated student, not just a part of the 'further education' program. Exciting, a little nerve-wracking... but I'm fairly sanguine: I think I would probably be accepted, despite my lack of experience as a therapist (that wouldn't be unique, though I may need additional training in Britain) and any other limitations.
And, the truth is: if I weren't accepted, I would be very disappointed – my most interesting hopes/plans for the future center on studying there – but not shattered. I know I would need to discover some new purpose in some other way; but I feel that that would be possible, if I'm turned back (with a flaming sword, as it were).
The flaming sword?... perhaps it comes to mind because I'm spending time on a minor assignment for one of the courses at the Institute; we were given a list of books from various periods and asked to pick two and explain them in terms of their images of love. I picked Gottfried's Tristan (stranger than I expected – has anyone ever noticed that Tristan lies? I mean, he lies a lot? He's hardly Parsifal – or Galahad – or even Lancelot or Gawaine for that matter); and then e-mailed the teacher to suggest something non-heterosexual – and so he's allowing me to discuss Kushner's Angels in America.
A huge favorite of mine, of course... but it is a bit hard to read it, or alternatively to watch parts of the television production, again; it has always been incredibly involving, such that it distracts me from practically everything else. But if I can keep my emotional balance, keep working out a few small research projects, finish up the semester meetings, and start to pack for Saturday, I'll be all right.
It is interesting – and not very easy, given how sprawling and complex the work is – to think of how to briefly sum up the connections it makes between love and the archetypal. At first I thought, well really they're fairly separate – it is when relationships break down (Prior and Louis, Harper and Joe, plus the ghostly remains of relationships that involve Hannah, Belize, and even the angels) that the super- or ab-human breaks in. Which means either that the crises that destroy domestic love push the characters into various scary, lonely places from which they have to find their ways back; or that there is a metaphorical relation between them.
Anyway: it is good, if rather entangling, to spend time with this again....
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