I've been a bit neglectful here for a bit, pre-occupied as I have been with the holidays and family and other delights. But I have been thinking about how best to use this space and what I want to do. And I have some ideas.
I intend to continue with issue posts as they strike me. I care a lot about what has happened to the mental health system, I am interested in the issues that underlie what has happened and, well, I get to add my voice to the fray.
I also want to do something a bit more systematic about posting on Jungian subjects. I run a Jung Study Group wherein we read from the Collected Works. Next week we start with Volume IX (Part II) : Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self. I am going to try selecting something from what my group reads and writing about it here. The group meets twice monthly.
And I am very interested in the ideas in The Matrix and Meaning of Character: An Archetypal and Developmental Approach by Nancy J. Dougherty and Jacqueline J. West. So, I am thinking about using it as a source of posts in the weeks the Jung group is not meeting.
I am aiming at at least 2 posts every week, likely on Tuesday and Friday. I hope you'll join me.
In the meantime, I found an interesting piece in Scientific American on boredom. I leave you with this for today --
Virtually everyone gets bored once in a while. Most of us chalk it up to a dull environment. “The most common way to define boredom in Western culture is ‘having nothing to do,’ ” says psychologist Stephen Vodanovich of the University of West Florida. And indeed, early research into the effects of boredom focused on people forced to perform monotonous tasks, such as working a factory assembly line.
But boredom is not merely an inherent property of the circumstances, researchers say. Rather this perception is subjective and rooted in aspects of consciousness. Levels of boredom vary among people: some individuals are far less prone to ennui than others—and some, such as extroverts, are more susceptible to this feeling.
Thus, a new generation of scientists is grappling with the psychological underpinnings of this most tedious of human emotions—and they have found that it is more complicated than is commonly known. Researchers say that boredom is not a unified concept but rather comes in several flavors. Level of attention, an aspect of conscious awareness, plays an important role in boredom, such that improving a person’s ability to focus may therefore decrease ennui. Emotional factors can also contribute to boredom. People who are inept at understanding their feelings and those who become sucked in and distracted by their moods are more easily bored, for example.
Staving off tedium is no mundane matter. People who are predisposed to boredom are more likely to suffer from ills such as depression and drug addiction; they also tend to be socially awkward and poor performers at school or work. Getting at the origins of boredom may lead to ways to prevent and treat such pathologies and detrimental behaviors.
