in the hall of mirrors

Taut

It has felt as though I'm living about four lives – and am able to comfortably manage, say, about two... university marking and administration with the year abroad, HIV patient group and clarifying everything for other people to take charge of parts of it, training at the Jung-Institut and trying to get into colloquia, schedule supervision, and of course taking on new analysands....

It's all, or mostly, good: I am not upset, but I am certainly... taut. Overly attentive, constantly scanning, a bit tightly wound: haven't snapped at a lot of people, but I do tend to bypass discussion at the moment, in search of the punch line of every exchange.

Of course, certain times of year at the university, and every time I prepare to go to Zürich, has this same fairly manic quality. I always leave the house looking like Peter Finch's... but I do it in the style of Glenda Jackson. Unfortunately.

And tonight, in a yoga class I didn't entirely have time for but (fortunately) went to anyway, Conrad said: what do you want to solve tonight, handle tonight? And I thought: okay – I should be able to do these Zürich trips without winding myself as tight as a ball of wire.

Well, even an hour and a half of yoga didn't unwind all that; I was still breathing slightly unevenly, too fast, a bit shallowly (too much green tea today?).

But I can see, or at least I can sort of imagine, actually reaching some better, calmer,  point – hey, I've read my Zen and Tao and others, haven't I? even if I don't meditate all that often –

We shall see. Things are good, things are moving forward – supervision with Verena Kast, with Robert Hinshaw! – there are exciting things coming, it's true –

but it should be possible to move some of these things forward more easily: like the Taoist – with a casual flick of the wrist....

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 people don't recognize, so...

(Incidentally: did you know that the old fuss over whether 'psychoanalysis' was restricted to Freudians or not is now considered unnecessary? I'm allowed to call myself a psychoanalyst... I still prefer 'analyst', though of course that also tangles me up with my musicology colleagues, who then think: Ah, he knows all the different ninth chords!... and no, I don't know them.)

Oh well. Anyway it's going well.

•••

Many things to do, a sense of a sudden expansion in responsbilities – it did occur to me that suddenly I do have rather a lot going on: analysis, plus continued training, my own personal analysis, my first control case colloquia and supervision sessions, both in the UK and later in Zürich;

some teaching (fortunately less than last semester), exams to mark, postgraduates, planning courses for next year; year abroad students, their plans and auditions and paperwork...

the HIV patient group, teaching medical students, peer counseling... oops I do have to catch up on the peer counseling appointments.

New chairs for the middle room (because chairs for analyst and analysand are supposed to be both comfortable and similar). New business cards, for all of these things – made on my computer, as long as I can figure out how to add small pictures. Endless e-mails all over the place of course, the curse of our time.

And of course – RESEARCH!... the slowest of all areas in my life, the one where I really must get a lot more done. And soon. Editing the book, two articles....

•••

Today was remarkably but effectively busy: e-mails, brief meetings that finished off tasks, the bank and new shoes, jumping from one appointment to another with alacrity and success – the way successful people are supposed to be, of course, according to all of those Business Advice books.

Naturally this is a bit surprising for me, as I can often be fairly helpless when faced with many tasks – but it is as though I am reaching a stage where many things (even most things, aside from writing of course, which is still my weakest point) can simply be glided through: done lightly and quickly. With the Tao, as it were.

And the truth is – I think that, even more than my personal analysis and training, the biggest source of this lightness is being an analyst for others: that caring for, hearing, the histories and disasters and strengths and anxieties of other people pulls me out of my own locked gears –

as though the larger view given me by these analytic relationships rebounds into my own life: and my own concerns suddenly have space around them, alternatives – even: life....