Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: all times I have enjoyed
Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone
Alfred Lord Tennyson, ‘Ulysses’Like Ulysses, I am facing the Athens of retirement, whatever that terra incognita may bring. At this propitious moment, I believe that it is time for me to explore why and how this cross-cultural enterprise has sustained my restless mind for these last almost forty years. The exacting requirements of wide scholarship, attention to detail and statistical finesse would seem to run contrary to my dreamy, poetic proclivities. Somehow, though, our work, together and alone, has sustained me, and it might be instructive for younger readers to explore my understanding of that sustaining dynamic at this late stage in my career.
When awarded an Honorary Fellowship after thirty-three years of service to my chosen subdiscipline on the margins of mainstream psychology, I was moved to speechless poignancy by the recognition being accorded to me by my ‘home’ association. Why and how, I wonder, did things come to this high point? As Louise Bogan prods us to consider in her Journey round my room,
There must be some reasonable explanation for my presence here. Some step started me toward this point, as opposed to all other points on the habitable globe. I must consider; I must discover it.
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