Time For A Catch-Up

My time in the East is sadly drawing to a close. It's been so much more than I expected, and if only it didn't have to end. Still, a possible dream is to live here again in the future, but first I need to move forward (if moving back to England is a step in the right direction).

I've always wanted to return to academia and I agree I may have taken longer than planned to get there, but I'm glad I took the time out after my BSc for a bit of life experience. The final year and dissertation exhausted me, and I wanted to make sure I had the passion to do it all over. Besides, I knew that an undergrad Uni-lifestyle is much more play than work and I wanted to go into further education with a different attitude. I want to do the extra reading, start the essays with plenty of time, and not deliberate between going out drinking or preparing for the seminar the next morning.

So I finally found the course that made me passionate. It was a toss-up between a psychologist or anthropologist route. Where I could read Darwin and Dawkins et al and learn about evolution forever and a day, where this topic is actually my first choice, I know that a) there is no career on the other side and b) I can read for pleasure in my free time. The other route then is a more analysis and counselling style and that which I think is more difficult to grasp in personal reading and possible as a career.

I applied for one course (risky - but, just as with Warwick, I knew it was the only one I wanted) at UCL (University College London) for an MSc in Theoretical Psychoanalytic Studies. Not exactly the modern psychology as seen through contemporary NHS but focusing on unconscious disorders of anxiety, depression and other Freudian despairs.

Actually, the thing that sealed the deal was a section I read in one of my favourite books on cognitive neuropsychology (Ramachandran's Phantoms in the Brain - recommended!) which discussed the 'three great discontinuities' of man's ego. Basically, humans have placed themselves on a pedestal as a) centre of the universe, b) higher than animals, c) in control of body and mind. This megalomania has been deflated through scientific revolutions - respectively, the Copernican revolution which displaced the Earth into a heliocentric Universe; the Darwinian evolution which taxonomically adjoined humans to other animals. The first two are quite easy to follow, with plenty of proof and not much to debate. The third is the most interesting: Freud's assertion that we cannnot control the unconscious and that 'the ego is not master in its own house'.

Understanding the mind, and helping those in psychological distress seems both fascinating and worthwhile. Where Freudian studies may not be the most conventional route to being a Clinical Psychologist (although there is the opportunity to train as a psychoanalyst instead), it is possible with some experience as an Assistant Psychologist, to move onto a D.Clin.Psy (Doctorate in Clinical Psychology - a three year NHS-funded PhD) as a qualified Clinical Psychologist on the other side. This is an extremely difficult course to gain acceptance onto (about 5% of applications are successful every year), but it's something I'm interested to try. Clinical Psychologists are slowly popping up around Tokyo and I'm investigating the opportunity to return afterwards. It's not surprising; more foreigners moving to Tokyo for business and facing culture shock, as well as the huge increase in bi-culture children and families etc. It's a possibility anyway.

So, I had a phone interview with the UCL course coordinator last Friday. She was extremely pleasant, interesting and motivating, and offered me a place then and there (the course was full but she offered me a spot anyway). It's a great motivator to come back to England as well as a first step in the right direction of a career.

I'm apprehensive about living in London - the price of trains alone is enough to deter anyone, not forgetting the stabbings that pop up in the newspapers everyday - but it's also an exciting city and one I've never lived in, so some more good experiences I'm sure.

I'm currently applying for jobs through the NHS (assistant psychologists etc) but again these have heavy competition. Maybe I'll have to take some voluntary work experience instead and hope that's enough for a D.Clin.Psy. The MSc is all day on Fridays and Saturdays (rather than the typical undergrad one hour here and one hour there timetable) to allow people careers. I wonder what the average age will be? It allows me to work almost full-time (Sun-Thurs, without much of a social life). We'll see.

So when do I return? I'm buying my ticket this weekend. Probably straight after Keiko (27th June) and my (3rd July) birthdays, unless something comes up this week and there's job interviews or the like earlier. The humidity's killing me, so for that reason, I'm not sad to leave. But I'm going to miss this place too much.

It's home.

I'm happy.

But it's time to push on with a career I want. And if that means sacrificing some things for the time being, so be it.

At the moment I've started on the preliminary reading list (it's long - aaagh!). For those critical of Freud, he started as a neurologist with a purely scientific background. I agree there's some strangeness in his theories, but a lot of it is groundbreaking. Still, I'm not sure about all of his attempts to sexualise dreams. My favourite line in The Interpretation of Dreams so far is (loosely): "There cannot be the faintest doubt what is meant by apples or an apple-tree... lovely breasts."

So that's my catch-up. There's more to mention of course, namely Keiko and I. Briefly, the plan is for her to come over on a student visa around January after I'm settled and we've saved a bit of money, but that's for another time.