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I have been captivated by Nina Coltart’s (1992) “Slouching Towards Bethlehem … Or Thinking the Unthinkable in Psychoanalysis” since my first encounter. Intrigued by her use of the slouching beast metaphor from Yeats’s poem “The Second Coming,” which I love, I found myself pulled in and comforted by her voice. Coltart’s presence on the page is authentic, engaging, conversational. Her voice reflects humility, humor, and respect for what she does not know. And yet Yeats’s images are ominous. Given the late Coltart’s stature as a psychoanalyst and consultant, imagine my relief as a newly minted clinician in midlife when I read, “It is of the essence of our impossible profession that in a very singular way we do not know what we are doing” (Coltart, 1992, p. 2), because I often felt that way.
Luckily, my not knowing would never come close to the sense of catastrophe Yeats (1983) evokes in his famous poem, which Coltart quotes in full.
The Second ComingTurning and turning in the widening gyreThe falcon cannot hear the falconer;Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhereThe ceremony of innocence is drowned;The best lack all conviction, while the worst