Inner Authentic Consent as Analyst's Mental Attitude to be in Negative Capability and Suffering in the Analytic Hour—An Interdisciplinary Approach Combined with Clinical Experience

This paper offers an interdisciplinary approach to negative capability and suffering in the analytic hour. First, I discuss the development that Bion proposes to this concept coined by the poet Keats. Then I analyse the concept's meaning in Keats' poetry, through his poem ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ and propose a unique reading. I show how the poet precedes psychoanalysis in his understanding of mental life, by proposing deep inner authentic consent to accept his suffering while longing for negative capability during the act of creation. Finally, I argue that when attempts to understand the patient through transference and extra-transferential interpretations do not specify his emotional truth, the analyst's consent to bear the feeling of suffering as an attitude while in negative capability in the analytic hour may contribute to the analyst's stamina- therefore to more precise understanding of the patient's emotional truth through the analytic process. I show how this stance parallels that of Keats the poet: the analyst in a negative space of inner authentic consent to suffering – negative capability, communication of projective identification – while dedicating himself to discovering the patient's emotional truth during the analytic hour. The paper is accompanied by vignettes of analysis that demonstrate this idea.