Letter sent to The Guardian 18/04/26 I was pleased to see in Dr Hannah Critchlow's article ( How to train your brain to see possibility instead of doom ) that neuroscience has discovered the challenges of managing uncertainty, and of poet John Keats's concept of 'negative capability' as an important human capacity when facing 'not knowing'. These ideas are central to psychoanalysis and especially its application to organisations known as systems-psychodynamics. Wilfred R Bion (1897 – 1979) first suggested that the ability to remain “in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason”, as Keats described, was an important state of mind for the psychoanalyst to nurture. In simple terms we might think of it as keeping an open mind and not rushing to premature conclusions. This was later applied in the context of providing consultancy to organisations where, for example, a leader's capacity to not know all th...
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