I’m recalling my first international conference where I presented a paper at the International Congress of Psychiatry in Madrid, Spain. This was in 1965, I don’t recall the title of my paper, but what I do recall is that I and several colleagues went for a walk. At one point, we found ourselves behind the conference cater and discovered a number of large posters covered with tarps. In looking at the posters, we found they were all the image of Franco, that had been taken down from their posting on the conference center. As we were doing this, we were chased by the police. We escaped back inside the conference center before they caught us. They were really rough looking hombres!

What is the purpose of remembering this today?

I was not trying to remember but I did open this file to write down whatever presented itself. So I can’t claim any conscious success. I’m just scribing what appeared when I stared at the blank page. I can’t help but feel there is someething to learn from these “presented” memories. I’ll post whatever I come up with.

Thought for the Day – May 20, 2026

The foundations of postmodernism are best exemplified in texts by Jean Baudrillard and Jean-Francois Lyotard. Baudrillard’s “Simulacra and Simulation” is the foundational text where he coined the concept of hyperreality. Baudrillard posits that understanding is impossible and when one thinks otherwise one is seduced into a simulated version of reality he calls hyperreality. Meaning is obliterated and there can be no “grand theory” of understanding. The real, the objective, the rational, the true, become simulations, copies, and real understanding disappears in favor of simulacra. The dominant simulacra (as we see today) values the false copy and insists it is the correct understanding. This puts nonsense on a par with sense, falsity ion a par with truth, irrational on a par with rational. This is the character of the hyperreality we are living in.

In his book, “The Postmodern Condition,:” Lyotard argues that seeking of grand narratives of understanding have collapsed and efforts to resurrect this approach are destined to collapse as well. The collapse of grand narratives points to the collapse of any formulation of absolutes, including ethics. Lyotard pointed to childhood as a state that is desirable but unattainable. Seeking it anyway, is what one can try in the face of all else.

Today I am remembering Jon Fosse’s Nobel Prize speech. I think I am remembering this because I am working on how to get people to write from the geography of “the other” rather than ego-based writing. The seminar I’ll do for the C. G. Jung Society of Seattle, starting June 3, will focus on this.

Here is what Fosse said in his speech:

“… when I write, I never prepare. I don’t plan anything. I proceed by listening. When I write, at a certain point, I always get the feeling that the text has already been written, it is out there somewhere, not inside me, and I just need to write it down before the text disappears.”

This captures the way I write most things I have written.

It was February 8, 1971. The tree cutters cut down a large tree that was near our swimming pool. The tree consultant had said there was likely to be damage to the pool if not cut down. So, despite our misgivings, we ordered it cut down. The next morning at 6:01 am, the earth quaked in what came to be known as the Sylmar earthquake. It caused a lot of damage. What it caused in me, as I tried to get up from our waterbed and stagger to the glass doors overlooking the pool, was the feeling that the quake would crack the pool in retribution for our cutting down the tree. As I watched the pool, the water splashed onto the deck, but I could see no crack. And later examination of the whole pool revealed that it was intact. Later that day, I asked students to write out what they experienced as they woke up from the earthquake. When I examined these reports, I discovered that more than three-fourths of the responses indicated fantasies or dreams of retribution. I had an impulse to publish these findings, but did not do so. It remains an interesting question.

Near the end of his life, Jung wrote that it would be the artist who would provide the welcoming eros for the coming guest. I take this to mean not just those who are acclaimed as artists by the marketplace or other means, but the artist in each and every one of us. I think it means recapturing that state we were in as children, where art was the province of all. So, how do we begin to make art in which eros is the cosmogonos of creation? I will be doing a five-session seminar for the C. G. Jung Society of Seattle that will focus on this question and its urgency in the present chaos. For details, follow this link: https://jungseattle.org and scroll down and look for “From Inside Out: The Eros of Expression.”

Saturday Memory
May 2, 2026

Despite my ear hurting, I went to the Saturday matinee which I frequented regularly as a kid, To mu surprise, I won the door-prize drawing. It was a box of Hershey chocolate bars. A couple of days later I was in the hospital with a serious case of mastoiditis, stemming from an infection in my middle ear. I began a round-the-clock treatment with penicillin shots (in the butt, as I remember). Penicillin had only recently become available. Arthur Fleming had won the Nobel Prize in 1945 for its discovery in 1928. My Mom thoughtfully brought in a small radio so I would have something to listen to. Radios in those days were powered by tubes that got hot. Without thinking, I put the box of Hershey bars, which mom had also thoughtfully brought, on top of the radio. Of course, they melted. Nonetheless, I licked up the gooey mess. I don’t recall thinking there was a lesson to be learned here. Even now, I’m not certain what the lesson might be. I do remember I enjoyed the melted Hershey bar. Perhaps that’s the lesson. One can enjoy the consequences of one’s errors.

I can do no better than to post the vision in acupuncture today. I now take the collapsing balloon as a metaphor for collapses everywhere and for how to respond.

Acupuncture. The scene began as soon as I closed my eyes. A huge balloon filled the space, and part of it was close enough for me to touch. It was a balloon. For quite a while, nothing happened, and then I could hear and then see the balloon was deflating, the air was coming out. After it fully collapsed, I understood that it was a symbol of what happens when inflation deflates, when a plan loses steam, or when the wind goes out of an idea’s sails. I also understood that the thing to do was not to try to fill the balloon again, but to focus on how to use the balloon in new ways. So, I thought the balloon could be gathered up to form a pillow and could be used as a dream pillow.  It could be cut into figures to make a collage. It could be stretched across a frame and used as a canvas. It could be a backdrop for a photograph. These ideas kept coming to me (it was not like I was doing the thinking) for the rest of the session.

Russ

My earliest memory about what I would be when grown up was I would be a medical doctor. This was the intense desire of my parents. Later it would be the intense desire of my best friend and my first long-term girlfriend. When I got to college, my major was pre-med and I was doing well. Then, one morning at the very start of my junior year, I woke up with the realization that, no, I was not to be a doctor. That was not to be my way. I had never had such an experience but it was so intense, that I could not ignore it and had to change to something else. I changed my major to experimental psychology. My parents were incredulous, my best friend said goodbye and my girlfirend ended our relationship. Letting go of being a doctor cost me a great deal, but I have never felt it was a wrong decision. If anything, it taught me to pay attention to intense experiences coming from “somewhere” I did not know, but would come to learn about later.

If this was a graduate seminar at the university, I would ask you to read Ben Lerner’s little book, The Hatred of Poetry. One can sum up his argument by saying that poetry is essential but impossible, like love.

Saturday Memory for April 18, 2026

In my last year of high school (1956), I worked part time for Bank of America, delivering deposit information to the Federal Reserve Bank. At lunch time, my friend and I would eat lunch at Clifton’s Cafeteria. Almost everyone there was old, in our minds, really old. The conversations we overheard we thought were hilarious: talk of being old, hospital stays, friends dying, falling, wheelchairs., aches and pains. We smirked and giggled. I can’t recall now why we thought all this pain and suffering was funny.

Today, I read in the Los Angeles Times, that the proprietor of Los Angeles’ legendary Clifton’s has given up on reopening the shuttered venue.

A wave of nostalgia swept over me.

It was no longer funny what we heard there seventy years ago.

And now Cliftons’ itself has died.