An Elephant of One's Own

Emphysema update: I mentioned early in this blog that I was turning into a barrel (come to think of it, I may have sent that post to the Draft Limbo). If you can recall John Hurt from the first Alien , you'll know what a "chestburster" is. Well, when you have this, your lungs are the chestburster. The interesting part is what happens to your arms. They sort of slide outwards to accommodate, rather neatly considering: there are various frictions and creakings, but on the whole, the bones cope rather well, or have done so far. Sleeping is a bit of a problem, and has to be accomplished via a strategic arrangement of pillows. The main thing about having only a tiny, residual lung capacity is it forces you to avoid anything that might raise adrenaline levels or pulse rate. Also, your thinking becomes woollier by the day, due to long term oxygen depletion. Whole branches of logic become closed to you, and you have to keep going largely on random associations of ideas. That'...

Before you say anything: yes, of course I know that psychoanalysis is a pseudoscience. (Sometimes I think science is a pseudoscience, but let's not go there today.) So no, you won't catch me believing in anything, other than people, for which I do make an exception. However, as I already pointed out with regard to Christianity, you don't need to believe in stuff to find it interesting. And what I found interesting about the psychoanalytic method is that there seems to be something alive inside it. I mean, if you take the box and shake it, you hear a faint, plaintive squeaking from inside. Which is more than most pseudosciences will give you, let's face it. In my case it happened like this. A friend recommended Merce, who was reputedly good at fixing broken children. I wasn't a child - must have been getting on for forty by then - but whoever recommended her to me must have thought I was, or that I acted like one, or something. Anyway, I had never been to a shrink...