Well, It's very disappointing to myself that I have not written here since January and didn't write as much last year as I would have liked to have written.
However, I have been writing quite actively, and have been reconstructing my girlhood growing up through the Japanese form of poetry known as Haiku. I came to understand that I had a vast number of flashes of memory of my distinctly being aware from a young age throughout adolescence and young adulthood.
This led to an idea to do a sort of Japanese Western fusion poetry where I could place these individual Haiku into a western style stanza long form poem in a chronological order. The whole body of work serves to validate my gender identity and also demonstrates some of the developmental challenges that many transsexuals experience on their journey. I'm very interested in writing about developmental tasks that are encountered along with looking at mastery vs failure of these developmental tasks.
At the same time, I've renewed my interest in Logotherapy. Logotherapy is a form of psychotherapy founded on the experiences and ideas by Victor Frankl. Dr. Frankl was a psychiatrist in Austria when the Nazis came to power. He was interred in one of the worst concentration camps, Auschwitz solely based on being Jewish, and a rather secular Jewish man at that. He survived the experience. and was able to be reflective about his experience. Specifically, he observed that the difference between those who survived the Holocaust did so because they had not lost a sense of purpose. Their lives continued to have meaning despite the indescribable horror of man's capacity for brutality and sadism that they faced every moment of their existence in the concentration camps.
Furthermore, these people had a vision that was unshakable for a hopeful future. It was these characteristics that allowed those who were not cremated or gassed to survive.
It seems to me that Logotherapy which is based on these ideas, has quite a lot to offer as a potentially highly effective school of therapy. Rather than examining the past in detail and dredging up problems from the past, logotherapy as I understand it at this time, encourages people to find meaning in their present circumstances while creating a vision for how one wants to live her life.
To understand this therapy better, I have been reading Dr. Frankl's seminal book Man's Search For Meaning, and researching articles about Logotherapy. I found a 150 hour program that leads to a degree and Diplomat status for advanced practitioners. I am very seriously considering enrolling in this program so that I may be better prepared to use these powerful tools to help my patients.
In the meantime, I seem to be getting a bit wiser as I gracefully grow a bit older; I decided to do what worked so well last summer and work only three days a week again. I have projects that are ongoing in improving my beloved old home and I continue to find golf to be a spiritual discipline.
Hopefully I'll write a few helpful articles here as well during this time!
