Not a lot of blogging happening this week as I finish up various pieces of work in advance of heading to New York first thing in the morning. It's my favourite city and I invariably find myself re-energised from my visits there. I'm not sure what I'll blog about along the way...but New York always throws up some really interesting experiences and I'm really looking forward to the trip.
Every trip to New York begins in the same way - being overwhelmed by the assault of images and energy - not to mention battling jet lag! Even though I've been to New York several times, it's always familar and always new. In conversation with some Irish friends the other evening we began to explore the differences between Dublin and New York - after all, money is flowing in Ireland isn't it? We've modernised haven't we? We're rapidly becoming multi-cultural aren't we?
The difference between New York and Dublin boils down to the answer to this question "Is it possible?" the New York answer is always "yes" and the Dublin answer is invariably a variation on "no". Actually the Dublin answer will rarely be a direct "no" (the Irish language doesn't have a word for "no"). Even though there is a price tag attached to every NYC "yes" it's still possible to get stuff/anything done here. I wonder what it's like living in a society where (theoretically) anything is possible...it's only 3000 miles from my home town but it's a galaxy away in psychological terms.
Goodness where does the time fly? I can't believe I've been in NYC for three weeks and will be back in Ireland in a couple of days. It's been a great trip and enhanced no end by meeting up with a number of bloggers whose work I read and admire. I had a great dinner with the Hesitant Hack, discovered new cocktails with Mark and met the great Jason Kottke for a coffee yesterday.
The trip has provided lots of interesting material that's blogworthy - I have been keeping notes but haven't sat down to draft any entries yet - the natural contemplative spirit of ending a trip and beginng re-entry will no doubt provide the space for that. There always comes a time when I can't hear the accents here any more - it happened a few days ago. The city no longer feels foreign - but all that means is that for a short space of time, the accents at home will be strange and there's always a day or two where it feels as though I've not landed yet..it's an interesting transitional space and one that provides a whole range of choices...do I arrive back different or the same? to the same or a different place? What's the opportunity to do things a little differently from now on? How long before it all feels as it used to? Can I prolong the feeling of newness?
That's the glory of travel for me - and indeed all kinds of newness and new places - it gives us the chance to look back on ourselves and wonder if we want to go back there or whether we want to move on some place else.
I'm sitting on the 7.30am train to Waterford this morning. It's 7.10am and I'm wondering why the train I'm on is pulling out of the station 20 minutes early. I ask the guard what's happening and he confirms that this is the 7.10 train to Galway, the first stop is Portarlington which is nowhere near Carlow which is where I need to be for 5 back to back meetings. I utter a minor expletive and begin strategising as to how I am going to get from Portarlington to Carlow before 10am. Nothing springs to mind...major hassle for my client and monster embarrassment for me seems the only way out. Resisting the temptation to mutter more expletives out loud I'm met by the guard on his way back down the carriage. He's using a walkie talkie and comes over to tell me that they will stop the train for me in Kildare so I can catch the 7.30 train from Dublin to Carlow.
In an age where good natured and effective customer service is as rare as hen's teeth may I take the opportunity to thank the staff of Iarnród Éireann for their intervention this morning? This dim witted and distracted traveller showed up on time and unembarrassed all thanks to the kindness of strangers.
I'll be attending the MediaGuardian Changing Media Summit 2007 in London on Thursday next with a whole 24 hours off to play in London the day before! If you are at the conference do say hello
I’m off to New York next week for a well earned break. (Some of you may have already noticed that my Muse took off on her own a week ago). New York is my default location these days and I invariably come back energised and enthused about the sense of possibility. Somebody once asked me what the difference between New York and Dublin is and I replied that in New York the answer to every question is “yes” (it may cost you, but the answer is yes) and in Dublin the answer is generally a variation on “no”. Except we don’t have a word for “no” in the Irish language so we’ll probably avoid a “yes” and leave you with the ambivalence!
Anyway, as is usually the case prior to any trip I’m working my way through the web pages and listings to see what’s on, where I might go, what I might see etc and after only a day and a bit I’ve hit panic – I’m overwhelmed by choice. I’m searching for “yesses” and “nos” and all I can reach for is the overwhelming ambivalence that comes with having to make a decision on the basis of too much information.
This isn’t helped by the fact that I finished reading Barry Schwartz’s The Paradox of Choice recently which eloquently and brilliantly describes what I’m facing now and how very often we revert to what is known and understood at the expense of risk taking and newness because it’s simply too much to wade through and decide upon.
Maybe it would be easier to revist all of New York’s finest tourist attractions that I have already seen? Should I revist my favourite cup cake shop the Magnolia Bakery? A visit to MOMA once again? That Staten Island Ferry trip around midnight? Back to Otto’s for olive oil ice cream? Then again, I should really take advantage of the trip and go for a whole selection of new experiences. I could also drive myself nuts with all this decision making shrouded in opportunity.
Perhaps the only way to approach this is to start with the boundaries – time, location, budget and interests and work backwards? I hear many of my clients decry the limitations and boundaries within which they are “forced” to work and I’m constantly amazed at how necessary boundaries are for true creativity to flourish. Even though I’m overwhelmed by the choices on offer in NYC I’m also savvy enough to know that I have some likes and dislikes (dive bars in the East Village were never really “my thing” and I’m unlikely to change that habit on this trip) and when that’s added to the boundaries I may just come up with a mix that’s comfortable enough and different enough to make this a unique experience this time around. In the meantime, I’m open to suggestions and offers to enhance the mix! And if there are any bloggers out there interested in meeting up please get in touch.
I've just returned from Stockholm where I attended the International Society for the Psychoanalytic Study of Organizations annual symposium. The symposium is an opportunity for those of us working in a psychoanalytic way with organisations to meet and share knowledge about this area of practice.
There were numerous interesting papers and one in particular on a group relations conference conducted via the internet caught my attention. I have to admit to being mystified by how a group relations conference that didn't deal with the territory (i.e. cyberspace) would work. The consultant presenting the case paper bravely stepped into the project and fed back his experiences of how it was managed and conducted. The detail of that isn't of particular interest here. But what did interest me is how systems-psychodynamics needs to be applied to working on the web. There is a whole body of literature at this stage (particularly from psychology and systems thinking) about operating and working on line which I think systems-psychodynamics needs to attend to and build on, not merely replicate. Working on the web seemed to be a very new idea to many people who were at the conference and to some extent mirrors my experience of therapists and consultants who work psychoanalytically, many of whom have a sometimes neurotic attachment to being "in the room" and privilege this as the primary way of generating the transference. (As an interesting aside, of the 14 people who attended this workshop only 2 of us were women...I'm not sure what that means but the gender imbalance was more pronounced here than at any other event I attended).
Some of the thoughts that occurred to me about this..
1. The web doesn't exist - it is a wonderful manifestation of the collective unconscious - everywhere and nowhere at the same time.
2. The web is a boundary less space and many of the conversations (particularly in the wake of the Kathy Sierra incident) about placing boundaries on it have resulted in strong reaction and an acknowledgement that formal rules simply won’t work in this space which means it’s ripe for persescutory experiences and a regression to primitive drives.
3. The only thing that stops any of us committing an “offence” online is our own conscience or sense of what is right and wrong. So our internalised boundaries and how those boundaries are negotiated and made meaning of, are of primary importance in this space.
4. The absence of the social clues that assist us make meaning of, and interpret, relationships offline are absent online so this heightens the transference and counter-transference in a way that can be persecutory. This is why I’m mystified as to how a group relations conference that doesn’t address the territory can operate with integrity in this space.
5. When a conference finishes we have our experiences of the people who attended and how we entered into relationship. When contact online ends we have that, minus the physical presence of people but we also have the written correspondence. What happens to the text afterwards? And how are boundaries around text negotiated? We all know that once something is out there in cyberspace it is never coming back so the archiving function of the web is something that has to be looked at?
I'd love to hear from any psychodynamically informed practitioners working online about their own experiences of this area..
I'm on the way to New York where I will be for the 10 days or so and am looking forward to another visit to my favourite city. I'll also be attending the New York regional meeting of the International Society for the Psychoanalytic Study of Organizations where I'll be presenting on the 'cyber system in the mind'. I'm going to do a swift overview of social media; reflect on some of the issues presenting in my therapy and consulting practice arising from internet activity; offer a case study and some some hypotheses about the scarcity of psychodynamic practitioners online. (So far I have only come across one other - Irish man- Mark Dowds who is based in Canada these days). I'll post some of my thinking here after the event along with links to the sites I'll be referencing in the presentation and some other resources. I'm hoping to catch up with Terrence Seamon for a cup of coffee during my stay and if anyone else out there is interested in getting in touch please do drop me an email.
Bloggers "know" a lot of other bloggers, but seldom get to actually meet them.
This quote from Terry Seamon is so true. I skim read nearly 150 blog postings a day - many from bloggers I feel I 'know' very well from their writing. but most of the bloggers on my blogroll remain virtual friends - particularly those outside Ireland. On this trip to the US I decided to meet some of those bloggers in real life. First up was Dr Jay Parkinson and following that I met Terry at his office The American Management Association in the middle of Times Square and the theatre district. Terry describes himself as a
Learning & OD Guy, interested in management, change, organization effectiveness, communication, work, creativity, media, movies, travel, spiritual growth, stewardship, and making the world a better place.
and I was intrigued by the mix of interests, curiosities and expertise he fuses together on his blog Here We Are, Now What? We had a really interesting conversation about all of the above and much more and yet again I was so impressed by the generosity of bloggers and Terry's interest in meeting a complete stranger. While blogging is often (rightly) described as a narcissistic activity it's also a great way of building bridges and starting conversations - many of those are online, many others extend to offline meetings. I intend to continue cold calling bloggers when I'm on my travels and I would like to extend an invitation to any travelling bloggers to do likewise and make contact with me if you are planning to be in Ireland.
It will be quiet here for the next week or so as I'm flying to New York on Friday. I'm looking forward to catching up with friends, bloggers and soon to be friends alike so please get in touch if you have time for a coffee. I'll be speaking about my current research into the organisation of disappointment at the William Alanson White Institute on Monday 28th April at 7pm. If you'd like a ticket you can book by emailing Carlos Acha or phone 212-873-0725, ext. 10. This will be the first time I've spoken about my work to anyone other than my academic supervisors so I'll be nervous, excited and hopefully not too disappointing. Looking forward to seeing some of you there.
I had two pleasant meetings in London this week – one took place at the RSA near Charing Cross on Thursday, the other at 1 Alfred Place off Tottenham Court Road yesterday. The RSA is a meeting of minds kind of place – library, lecture room, brainstorming places and lists of awfully famous and distinguished members on the walls in the public spaces. Alfred Place is more business meeting orientated with plenty of lounge space, free wifi, coffee and working space. But what both have in common is that they are private spaces where people of like minds or similar interests can come together to talk. RSA fellows also invite complete strangers into their homes to carry on the conversations in a project called Open Dinner.
The idea is simple. Fellows organise dinner parties, so called OpenDinners, in their own homes around topics close to their heart; and issue open invitations through RSA networks, voluntarily abiding by an agreed set of rules.
The simple rules include
• Dinners need to have a clear theme or purpose. • All dinners need to be openly advertised in advance. • There can be as many guests as the host can seat. • No dinner must cost more than £3 in total per guest – excl. drinks. • All dinners (guest list, recipes, photos etc) need to be documented. • Reviews/reflections by guests are strongly encouraged.
Diners post their reviews, comments etc on the site afterwards and so the conversations continue.
Another interesting find is The School of Life which proports to be
a new cultural enterprise based in central London offering intelligent instruction on how to lead a fulfilled life.
You can sign up for courses about love, politics, family or have somebody do a makeover on your reading habits or, take a weekend trip to Heathrow Airport in the company of philosopher Alain de Botton.
The School of Life is
based in a small but spectacular shop on Marchmont Street, a thriving and bohemian part of central London. We've organised the shop as a chemist for the mind, a place where you can try out a variety of cultural solutions to everyday ailments. We sell books, artworks, courses, holidays and therapeutic services.
And it seems to me that there’s an interesting shift happening in the ‘real’ as distinct from virtual world these days – as though these types of spaces are a physical manifestation of the communities of interest/practice that are so common on social networking sites and now they’re working offline as well. I like this idea and I really like the Open Dinners idea – so much so that I’m tempted to launch into a version of it in Dublin. But, bearing in mind that most of the readership of this blog comes from outside of Ireland I’m wondering how I might successfully go about inviting a group of strangers to my home to talk about an interesting array of topics. I suppose half the fear is announcing a list of topics that I find interesting to discover I'm a lone ranger - what do you think?
I'll be spending the month of October in New York and am looking forward to catching up with some old friends (and maybe a few new ones as well!). There are a number of interesting psychoanalytic conferences and workshops I'll be attending (I'll write more about them closer to the time) and no doubt there will be some compelling conversations also. If you'd like to meet me for a coffee or a chat my NYC number is in the side bar so please get in touch.
In the meantime another psychoanalyst from NYC has started blogging.
During season 4 of Sex and the City Carrie's mac has a near death experience so she heads to Tekserve on West 23rd street to have her machine resuscitated.
I became a MacBook Air owner during my last trip to NYC in May and 2 months later the '3' key fell off my keyboard. Knowing that it wouldn't fall within the warantee conditions I started calling Mac repair places in Dublin. The responses ranged from 'we'll take it, look at it and get back to you in 10 working days' through to 'you'll need a new keyboard and that's expensive, real expensive'. I decided to wait till I was back in NYC and last week I headed off to the people who saved Carrie from motherboard oblivion.
Tekserve is a Grateful Dead, hippie, stuffed to the gills with every conceivable Mac accoutrement you can imagine kind of place. It's also full of Mac clutching owners, taking numbers, waiting in line to be triaged (I kid you not, there is actually a triage area where you're assessed as to the level of damage and assigned to the appropriate kind of consultant). It's as far away from the slick whiteness of the Genuis Bars at the Apple stores as you can get. You can tell the place is run by enthusiasts who know their stuff.
After waiting about 15 minutes I was triaged - my non fatal status was confirmed as was the fact that a repair would be in order. 20 minutes later and my laptop was handed back, brand new '3' key in place. I was also told there would be 'no charge' - clearly imagining myself to be hard of hearing I had to ask for that to be repeated. 'We like to help' was the response..
I'm grateful to the Tekserve people for their great service but even more amazed at my own reaction - I was flabbergasted that in this day and age there's such a thing as 'no charge' with 'no catch'. On the basis of my last 'customer service' experience in Ireland it's nice to know that there's a style of service that works, that's respectful of customers but more to the point - results in more business. I'll be back to Tekserve. If I've any more mac problems I'll be saving them for future trips to NYC where I'll be happy to pay for the repair and the customer service.
Thanks to Mark for the heads up about Tekserve
I've only recently come across the Philoctetes Center in New York
The Philoctetes Center for the Multidisciplinary Study of the Imagination was established to promote an integrated, interdisciplinary approach to the understanding of creativity and the imaginative process.
They have a public programme of events most of which are archived on audio and video and available to view on the site. I'm enjoying Is Freud Dead?: The Relevance of Freud's Theory of Group Psychology in Today's World amongst others. (Update, there's a pdf copy of Jane Hall's lecture here).
I'm enjoying the number and variety of psychodynamic offerings in New York - particularly those open to the public and made accessible to an interested and non-expert audience. So far I have attended
The International Society for the Psychoanalytic Study of Organizations' regional meeting at which Brendan Duddy talked about his role in brokering the ceasefire in northern Ireland. The Centre for Modern Psychoanalytic Studies' Sunday Film and Brunch series in which two episodes of In Treatment were given the psychoanalytic treatment by a group of candidates and interested others. (Update it has just been confirmed that In Treatment has been re-commissioned for a third series beginning in 2010). I then attended a lecture entitled Psychoanalytic Work in Today's World: Would Freud Approve? by Jane Hall organised by the Metropolitan Institute for Training in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy at the Karen Horney Clinic.
This is in marked contrast to the dearth of offerings in Dublin...so I'm cramming as much in as I can and really enjoying the opportunity to think about the relevance of psychodynamic thinking to organisational work.
