Bion’s Negative Capability and Narcissism in Psychoanalysis

Abstract

Paradoxes inherent in the work of psychoanalysis challenge a practitioner’s sense of identity and clinical capacities at all levels of experience. In particular, there is an insoluble tension between the analyst’s role as a highly trained, specialized professional and an emotional participant in an enigmatic and unpredictable process, engendering narcissistic vulnerabilities and their associated defenses, individually and collectively throughout the profession. Using a hermeneutic textual analysis, this research examines the historical origins of psychoanalysis to the current postmodern psychoanalytic climate of pluralism and the “identity crisis” facing contemporary practitioners. Following a theoretical definition of narcissism and an exploration of the dangers analyst’s narcissism on the process of analysis, the author then outlines elements of a Bionian epistemological psychoanalytic theory in order to reframe the idea of psychoanalytic “knowing,” highlighting the relationship between analytic narcissism and negative capability. A discussion is centered on the implications that negative capability, and the stance of humility it presupposes in the analytic attitude, has in relationship to narcissism for the field at large. As an essential psychoanalytic attitude or trans-theoretical fundament to the analyst’s working mind, negative capability influences collegial relationships and the approach to shame in analytic work, clinical issues such as impasse, use of technique, theory and model making, and by informing an overall guiding ethos for future generations practicing psychoanalysis.