Archive for June, 2010
A poem for this work
I met a luminous poet Dana Littlepage, at St Deiniol’s – a real meeting, heart and soul. I talked about this thesis; she wrote this poem:
Sweeper
She is sweeping the sunlit floor.
Floor splintered with light
where the darkness is not ignored,
where the dust is freed from its corner.
She is sweeping our times,
our yearnings turned into things.
She is sweeping the rooms of the mind,
so the body can find the spirit’s wing.
Though her broom is a hand’s breadth,
it moves to the body’s breath .
She is sweeping the words of our night
so that we might speak with tongues of living light.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 1 so far )The professional psyche
End of my stay at St Deiniol’s library, during which I have not achieved the tasks I listed at the beginning of the week. But no sense of failure because the space and time here allowed me to see an idea that has been lurking beneath my draft chapters: I am proposing that a profession can be conceptualised as a psychic entity, with an ego, persona, shadow and the possibility of integration. The literature supports this – eg Abbott 95 on professions as entities defined by boundaries, and others on the developmental process of professions – though some Jungian caution against over simplification of parallels between micro (individual) and macro (collective). But the chapter I thought I’d tidy away on Monday has gained from this explicit approach – it was buried in earlier drafts – and the arguments are clearer, even though it’s taken all week. Having worked til 2am making this case on Wed night, spent yesterday reading Hauke (2000) on Jung and the postmodern which dismantles such an argument. But not entirely – so today I aim to take on board these caveats while discovering the possibilities opened up by this new concept of a profession.
So, many thanks to this quite residential library that has given me the silence and space to think and work – booked again for July.
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Jung, Ethics & PR 
