I wonder what makes me always feel like going back over my memories and actually realizing that my emotions and psychology had certain time periods is an indicator of what a self-important jerk I am. I think I had that feeling the last time I prefaced one of my notebooks. I'm having it again.
Nothing that has happened in my life is important by any means. But there were different time periods in my life. And I do remember, as I'm going through these notebooks, that these time periods existed.
But it is kind of interesting that as all these non-important events were going on in my life during the writing of this notebook, the sky of the U.S. economy really was beginning to fall, while anybody who said the sky was falling was either called a Dr. Doom or a Chicken Little by all the people around them.
The first big event, as I remember things -- if you don't count the overall careening of the housing market as a big event -- was the collapse of Bear Stearns, which, as I remember things, became big news in August or September of 2007, but which, according to Wikipedia, really began on June 22, 2007.
Now, if I hadn't been so self-centered, I might have been able to see the sky falling. Instead, I remember seeing the Bear Stearns headline in the New York Post as I walked down the street to work. I remember trying really hard to convince myself that whatever it was that was happening to Bear Stearns was meaningless, as far as I was concerned. I had plenty of people to back me up in my beliefs.
So, as this notebook progressed, I personally focused on three events in my life. In the months preceding this notebook, my work as Assistant to my boss EB had been discontinued. My boss EB had been promoted to Analyst of a different industry. He was moved to sit near the people who covered industries similar to the one he was now covering. When I lost my boss EB, I lost my first "kind" mentor.
As this notebook progressed, I was moved into working with a new boss, DO, while continuing to work with my boss BS. I actually gained a lot by working with DO. First of all, I got a third "kind" mentor -- not in DO, who was becoming a huge name and was not around very much, but in his Associate, MW, who, like my co-worker ES, would answer any questions I ever had about the stock market and research in general. Plus, DO ended up being one of those people who were thought of as Chicken Littles at first, but then became known as something of a sage once the market began falling irrevocably.
Not long after the beginning of this notebook, I also started up my relationship with my psychiatrist A. A month or so previously, I'd lost my psychiatrist RB, who'd moved out of state after her husband had gotten a new job. The dream in this notebook where I am writing a "mystical report" with my sister is, I'm pretty sure, the dream I wrote either just before or just after my first session with A.
My relationship with A lasted for a little more than four years, until about November of 2011. I stopped talking with A, then started speaking with her again, from Colorado, in August of 2012. But in early November of 2012, I stopped speaking with her once and for all.
For all the benefits I got intellectually from my relationship with A, I think I should have ended the relationship much sooner. As a friend, A was wonderful. As a teacher, especially as a guide to new Jungian writers, A was wonderful. But as an Analyst, A was not very good -- for me. She even almost admitted it to me on occasion, saying that she was not accustomed, after dealing for so many years with a certain clientele, to dealing with someone who had, and wanted to deal with, actually archetypal problems.
A was, at least to my personal perceptions, afraid of my dreams. And I wanted someone who could analyze my dreams. As I've said before, I eventually got so tired of trying to bring my dreams in to A for serious analysis that I eventually stopped bringing in my dreams altogether. And I think my frustration with my interactions with A eventually led me to have more emotional troubles than emotional healing.
This wasn't because of A's lack of skill, but simply because we weren't a correct pairing for therapy. I knew it, and A told me something to that effect. But neither I nor A really wanted to call it quits on our relationship, for one reason or another.
The time period of this book also marks the first time in a long time that I had some distance from my friend R. I'd had a severe emotional outburst toward R in early June of 2007. I didn't see him again after that until late September of 2007. And I didn't see him again after that until July of 2009. I would say it's definitely interesting to see how R changes as a character in my dreams from this notebook to notebook 13. In notebook 13, my dream-relationship with R, and his then-fiancee (now wife) L, take on a much more sexual tone.
No comments:
Post a Comment