From Arrogance to Humility: A Psychoanalytic Venture into the Realm of Negative Capability

From Arrogance to Humility:
A Psychoanalytic Venture into the Realm of Negative Capability

We spend and too often waste a lifetime walking in the shadow of our ultimate unclaimed self.
• James Grotstein

Like one that on a lonesome road
Doth walk in fear and dread
And having once turned round moves on,
And turns no more his head;
Because he knows a frightful fiend
Doth close behind him tread.
• Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Do you hear the footsteps in the next room?
Not here, not there: you hear them
In another time that is now
(Paz, 1987, 40-43)

_{Photo Art credits: Claude Monet | Nympheas | 1897-1898  |  Oil on canvas}

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A venture is an undertaking involving chance, risk, or even danger. It suggests a daring journey. This course is designed to create a field of inquiry for exploring the concept of negative capability as a psychoanalytic entry into uncharted internal territory. The analytic intention of our study will be to discover or rediscover fruitful methods that stir or spark new images and thought yet undiscovered by the analytic couple.

James Grotstein refers to the C2 dimension of Bion’s Grid as the “secret painter of the mind.” Negative capability will be explored as the precursor to a force field of creative effort in the analytic relationship when tolerated by the analytic couple. The assumption is that mutual recognition and reciprocity are necessary elements in the process of creating potential space in which unformed worlds may materialize. Inevitably the tolerance necessary for the unknown to emerge puts pressure on the intersubjective forces pulling in two directions: the analytic couple may be pulled toward certainty and saturation on the one hand and toward potentiality and the unsaturated on the other. We will explore how as analysts we may move from the arrogance of certainty to the humility of humanness, from rejection to forgiveness, from deception to imagination. C2 of Bion’s Grid is the dimension in which unrepresented states either remain unexplored or denied, defended against by negation or deception, or, within the analytic framework, welcomed with expectancy as an entry into unexplored and undeveloped internal worlds that exist as potential fulfillment rather than terror -filled voids.

Registration is closed.
For inquires contact: info@wbcps.org

 

 

Learning Objectives:
After each unit of this course, participants can expect to…

• Explore ways to access and work with the negative along the spectrum of negation to creation.
• Deepen one’s awareness of the shift in technique and analytic identity that is required to move from pre-determined conviction and authority to that of mutuality born of respect and risk.
• Access clinically creative ways of transforming psychic holes into psychic representation formation.
• Explore how potential space for imaginative entry may be created within the analytic relationship.
• Develop the capacity to tolerate uncertainty and form dream narratives that come from the open workshop of the unconscious.

Readings

Session 1, October 26: Catherine Young Ph.D., FIPA, Janet Oakes M.A., FIPA
• Amir, Dana. (2016). Bion, Winnicott and The Lyrical Dimension of The Potential Space. In On The Lyricism of The Mind. (pp.1-13).
• Amir, Dana. (2016). The Philosophical and Human Meaning of The Lyrical Dimension. (pp. 28-36).

Session 2, November 30: Catherine Young Ph.D., FIPA, Janet Oakes M.A., FIPA
• Steiner, John. (1993). Two Types of pathological organization in Oedipus the King and Oedipus at Colonus. In Psychic Retreats (pp.116-130).
• Supplementary Reading: Sophocles. Oedipus Rex and Oedipus At Colonus.

Session 3, January 25: Coleen Gold, M.A., BC-ATR, FIPA.
• Freud, S. On Negation
• Andre Green. (2023) The capacity for reverie and the etiological myth. In The Freudian Matrix of Andre Green ed. By Howard Levine. (pp.75-90)

Session 4, February 29: Elizabeth M. Wallace, MD, FRCPC. FIPA.
• Kogan, Ilany. (2011) From psychic holes to psychic representations. In On Freud’s “Negation”. (pp.222-236)

Session 5, March 28: Paul Steinberg, MD, FRCPC, FIPA.
• Eshel, Ofra. (2019). Into the depths of a “black hole” and deadness. In The Emergence of Analytic Oneness. (44-65)

Session 6, April 25: Darren Thompson, MD, FRCPC, FIPA.
• Ferro, A. (2011). Negation, negative capability, and the work of creativity. In On Freud’s “Negation”. (pp.222-236).

Session 7, May 30: Catherine Young Ph.D., FIPA, Janet Oakes M.A., FIPA.
• W. Bion (1967). On Arrogance. In The Complete Works of Bion. (pp. 131-137).
• G. Civitarese. TBA

Session 8, June 27: Catherine Young Ph.D., FIPA, Janet Oakes M.A., FIPA
• Eigen, M. (2011). Wordlessness. In Contact With The Depths. (pp. 57-72).