About my Weblog

I love the weblog form. A literary form that is arising with the Net as the novel arose with the printing press. What is a weblog? Links with annotations, presented chronologically with the most recent items at the top, with archives. This simple format combines the public with the personal. The ability to link to each item enable asynchronous conversation. The date stamp creates a log, a journal.

I do classic weblogging here. Links and quotes from a site plus my own little raves. It has its ty, its quirkiness, the character of the blogger is there in every post. It is also linked to the particularity of my geography - to New Zealand.

At first glance a weblog with an address like mine Psybernet might seem like it is about being angry with your ex-lover or healing childhood wounds. Admirable as these topics are (I mean it, I am a psychotherapist) they are not on my mind as I log away here. It is subtly more strange. I have a sense of doing what I half tongue-in-cheek call having the Internet on the couch.

How does one do that? It is an ambitious enterprise. I am an avid reader of James Hillman, who is hot on seeing through things psychologically. It is clear that psychologically is NOT personally, socially, politically, religiously or medically. What is it then? Jung in his book Aion said he was putting the last 2000 years of human history on the couch, what a task to set one's self. He looked into grand themes which looked like the dreams of the universe, hence he has a chapter on UFOs and one on Nostradamus. With weblogs the enterprise is much easier, the Net is not reticent! The last 2000 years were not either but they were not searchable in Jung's day, more and more they are. With the Internet, as history is made it is searchable and sociometric - there is a web of links which are mostly quantifiable. The question of what it is to see psychologically still hangs there. To quote some words I like from a page on my own aging website "Patiently in the Present. Mindful... aware, seeing into the patterns of life, valuing experience, with loving attention..." Add to that the words deep, image, soul and dream and that sketches the general direction

What are the dreams of the Internet? What are its complexes? What is its mood, identity? What is the depth of the World WIDE Web? It takes a sort of immersion and connection to sense these things, and then some skill to present them back to the net. I may have some of these qualities but doing a weblog I link before I write. So how the web is indexed and presented in search engines and in a myriad of other ways is on the agenda here. All the soulful topics of noospheres and online spirituality I treat as dreams of the net. The etymology of the buzz words are like Freudian slips. The political trends and fights are like the personal conflicts in families.

And how can this have any objectivity? What constitutes a valid analysis? Analysis and objectivity are strange words for what happens in psychotherapy and strange in this weblog as well. It usually means looking at something from a long way away, but in psychotherapy it is the opposite. Objectivity comes through connection, relating. "When the patient's neurosis manifests its self in the relationship with the doctor the healing begins." Freud said something like that somewhere. It is through presentation of myself that the principle tool (me) is also open to view. I do not intend to present a stream of consciousness or a personal confession but there is enough... so that just as I strive for an insider's view of the Net, others can have an insider's view with me, also knowing who they are exploring with. That way you can make allowances for my insights.

It is that sense of being with others in this endeavour that is delectable. I am on mailing lists, in a virtual community and in private email and f2f discussions which means that while I blog here I have solitude and company at the same time. A delight. It may all sound a bit grand, and maybe I aspire that way, but basically it is a humble blog.

Walter

Saturday, 8 June, 2002, edited slightly Thursday, 23 January, 2003