I have decided that I wanted to do some theoretical research on my topic. The prevalent theories out there are: Marxism, which I have talked about before and I am not fond of; Feminism, which, while I agree with many of their equality arguments, I am not fond of Radical Feminism or Ecofeminism; I am very partial to Jugian analysis but I really dislike the idea of Archetypes; there is always Freudian analysis but there again I always thought he was a crackpot; Lévi-Strauss was a choice and is being used by another student in the department but I really dislike his theories. This left me with a dearth of theoretical source material. Much of this dearth was my own fault since I cannot stand some of the others for various reasons. I was beginning to think that I was not going to get anywhere. Then, when I was thinking about it the other day, I remembered a theoretical approach which is not in use among the academic community recently nor is it used heavily in Celtic Studies. It is called Transactional Analysis. If you read the link, it will give you an overview of the technique as it is used clinically.

With this in mind, I went about looking for the books that I would need to support my interest. The problem with TA is that the founder of the theory was more interested in helping people than creating some grand theory. It seems from some of my searches that this has carried on. Some scripts from TA have a basis in fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm type. This gives me an opportunity to use this theory in a new way when I use it to analyze some stories from Celtic Studies. I just need to get around the whole practical aspects of the process since I cannot use them as the people who I am using this on never existed or if they existed, are mythologized in the literature.

I am not sure as of yet if I am going to use this as my PhD study because I really wanted to do linguistic stuff with a section of context of the piece in Early Ireland. The problem is that I am kind of frustrated at the moment and my progress as slowed to a crawl. This is partly my own fault since I sent in a lengthy email to my supervisors but, when I have heard nothing back, I have not pushed for a meeting. In fact, I have not met with them since I returned to Scotland. I honestly think that this is not a good sign. I have sent in a few long emails (about once every two or three weeks) describing my situation but I have not heard anything from them. I asked my supervisor whom I see every week in class if he received my email and he said that he was pondering it. I hope he hurries up.

Otherwise, I spent the day running around since the books on TA are only at Morray House, which is on the Royal Mile and also is where the School of Education is located. It is interesting that most of the books are down there or in the Psychiatry library. You would think with the Main Library trying to suck up all the others that this would have been sucked up too. Anyway, I forgot my backpack so it was a pain in the ass to get the books.

posted by Chris  #6:07 PM | 0 comments |