Ciao
I am an analytical psychologist. I am also an animal lover and have been so since I was a child. My relationships with animals have been often as intense and fulfilling as my friendships with human beings, but I learned early that the one good rule was to understand that animals are creatures of their own, made up differently than we are in their way of thinking and reacting, although a great number of things are similar. Anthropomorfization, the seeing animals as having the same feelings and thought processes as humans, is one of the worst disservices we can do to other species.
Perhaps it was also my interest in understanding the animal mind (the many animal minds) that led me to choose psychology as a profession. Certainly we cannot understand others unless we understand ourselves. Together with this line of research and my primary profession, I have been a horse trainer for over thirty years, a pet therapist, a voluntary helper in wildlife sanctuaries and animal shelters. I have studied the behavior of horses, dogs, cats, birds of prey and prey birds, wild animals kept in captivity and domesticated animals. I have shared my life and living space with horses, cats, dogs, ferrets, rabbits, parrots, sundry birds, snakes and lizards, and many wild creatures rescued from bad situations.
All of the above has led me to merge human psychology and animal behavioral studies to approach the problems which arise between people and their pets. Which often manifest as problems of the pet but are problems of the human-animal relationship. Understanding oneself and the other (and understanding correctly without delusions) is in my experience as a therapist the better way to the solution of a great number of problems. So with people and so with animals who need relate to people and to one another.
I have made this journal only for the purpose of discussing the behavior of animals whom we choose to live with, and our behavior with them in the picture, the general ideas about what does it mean having a pet (especially a pet from a non-domesticated species) and the problems that often worry a human-animal relationship.
It may be of some help.
EDIT as of January 2006 When I made this journal I was determined to be active with it.
I have since then realized that, wanting to live life as I do and intending to fulfill the obligations I took upon myself, I end up with too little time to regularly frequent the internet and follow LJ.
Good intentions failed (once again), so this has become a very silly and extremely occasional dustbin of random thoughts.
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lycina's journal
