At home, after nearly a month in Zürich, six interviews to become a student at the Jung-Institut, and working out a detailed chart of requirements and expenses to complete their degree program...
oh, and today was Gay Pride in Newcastle; fun and full of friends, if extremely wet/rainy/muddy. Followed by Skype contact with the Greek side of the family, which had a reunion in New Hampshire today.
Before I left for Zürich, I became aware that perhaps the Jung-Institut would say no. I doubt that they will – my interviews went well, and for the trickiest questions (why do you need to become an analyst, you already have a career? you do know that it is disastrous to depend on clients for meaning in your life, don't you – but it is also foolish to be too much of a helper? and what do you plan to do for your own goals when you are seeing patients?) I didn't try to give polished or slick answers, but made it clear that I had thought about these things, and would continue to consider them as carefully as I could.
I also told them what I thought I would be particularly good at: not what is known as the 'Family and Marriage Counselling' wing of therapies, nor anything with children or young people; but to work with the ill and the dying, with artists and intellectuals, with the isolated, the older, those who have gotten detached from a dense network of family relationships, and those who need to find meaning in themselves, because the world no longer supplies it for them. That made sense to the interviewers; it also puts me in an area that doesn't have as many practitioners, but where they are always needed.
But even the idea that they might say no allowed my thoughts to turn in an unexpected direction – what would I do if they did that? And I said to myself, well: if they say no, I won't be shattered as I would have been at earlier points in my life – such as my reactions to college acceptances, job interviews, etc. – but, after allowing myself perhaps one or two mopey days, would turn back to my life and try to find meaning elsewhere.
And that direction has led, logically, to a new tree of valuations and decisions. Gradually I've realized that, although becoming an analyst is still an attractive prospect, it does not, at least at the moment, feel utterly necessary. This isn't really a surprise, in psychological terms – two years of analysis has fragmented certain complexes a bit, has detached some anxieties and ideas from each other, as is supposed to happen with a problematic complex. The world seems to have a few more possibilities, more alternatives; and things that I don't like – sorrows from the past, worries for the future, aspects of isolation and uncertainty – all seem diminished, less threatening than they once did.
Which is, of course, exactly what is supposed to happen in analysis.
The trick is: that all moves me to a place where being accepted at the Jung-Institut, studying there, creating a new vocation, now seem less matters of survival than merely interesting alternatives. In other words: whatever concealed desperation I have felt about these studies, and my idealization of them as wonderful, perfect and absolutely necessary for continued value in my life (see: my past emotional approaches to other programs and jobs, filed in chronological order under 'Crashes & Burns') have both deflated somewhat, have lost some of the panicky energy that drove them.
And so: I would still like to study at the Jung-Institut. But it feels more and more like a possibly interesting choice, not like a lifeline.
And that makes me think: do I really need to do this, at this point in my life?... well, I don't quite know. I thought in the last few days in Zürich: okay, I'll do the next three semesters – yes, an outlay of money and effort, but not as expensive or complicated as the second half of the training; and then I'll see how I feel.
It is all a bit weird, of course: parts of me that still expect driven, demanding commitments pull back in confusion, asking if I care about anything at all; other parts of me that worry about how I am perceived (there are a lot of those, of course) demand to know how we will sell a changed decision to the outside world: wouldn't it look like failure?... But all those anxious, fragmentary directions inside my head seem like – well, just the noise that accompanies some decisions...
rather than sounding like anything that much matters, to me.
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