Chapter 13. Prelude To or Substitute For Achievement. Attention and Interpretation

I had not a dispute but a disquisition with Dilke on various subjects; several things dove-tailed in my mind, and at once it struck me what quality went to form a Man of Achievement, especially in Literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously – I mean Negative Capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.

A number of aspects of the practice of psychoanalysis must now be discussed; I group them under the Language of Achievement. The quotation from Keats will serve as an introduction to the area to be covered. Language is loosely and widely defined to include behaviour of which it is sometimes said “actions speak louder than words”. Set over against and in contrast with the Language of Achievement, I consider the language that is a substitute for, and not a prelude to, action. Language of Achievement includes language that is both prelude to action, and itself a kind of action; the meeting of psychoanalyst and analysand is itself an example of this language. This discussion is centred on the problem of bringing attention to bear on the realizations to which Freud's theories approximate.

Any session should be judged by comparison with the Keats formulation so as to guard against one commonly unobserved fault leading to analysis ‘interminable’. The fault lies in the failure to observe and is intensified by the inability to appreciate the significance of

observation. I have rarely failed to experience hatred of psychoanalysis and its reciprocal, sexualization of psychoanalysis. These are part of a ‘constant conjunction’. In C category terms: the human animal has not ceased to be persecuted by his mind and the thoughts usually associated with it – whatever their origin may be. Therefore I do not expect any psychoanalysis properly done to escape the odium inseparable from the m