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Slowly, Surely, Maybe Authentically
About six stories from “Working Through the Holocaust” have been cyberspaced and two of them have been accepted for publication. Always exciting, is it not? to have stories published by online magazines, in this instance, before publication as a collection — I am much pleased. I still need to be testified, recognized, attested to — that kid can write. Oh, how I love that little boy within. Both accepted stories are my foray into the bizarre but apparently they do work. When my unconscious breaks through and grabs my hands and directs them to compose I know I am writing very…
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Civilization and its Discontents
There are times in reading Freud’s grimly pessimistic assessment that I come up against a personal stonewall. His grasp of his own metaphysics and mastery of psychoanalysis can be stupefying especially when he applies his learnings about the individual analysand to the community at large, culture, civilzation, society, whatever term you decide to use. Freud needs to be parsed sentence by sentence for the meat within the nut. I’ve had to read a few pages at a time, stopping thereafter because of the perplexity and depth of what I have read. Here and there I gather a mere morsel of sanity or…
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Oh, Western Civilization
In the back of my mind, now forwarded to the front optics, has been a long term fantasy. I intend to read many of the world classics I either avoided, chose not to read or delayed reading until I reached this dramatically telling age. Recently I spotted and then bought a mint copy in 8 volumes of Edward Gibbon’sThe History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. I read volume I enduring, rather, suffering that arch latinized English style of the 18th Century. It was grinding but I endured. I was going to read the entire work over a period…
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Critiquing
Groups are fascinating, infinite whorls of personalities spinning off and away. I sit in on two groups with Jane, one which she leads and I make contributions when I can and the other Jane and I are participants without teaching responsibilities. The groups combined are mostly women, three men including me. The issues that arise are compelling at times as I participate and while I observe as the “retired” therapist I am. That good old hovering attention that Freud advocated has never left me. I listen and I listen and I listen. Believe this or not, I listen while I speak,…