The worm that flies in the night

Abstract

The author reflects upon the nature and process of generating original thought using examples from psychoanalysis, anthropology, poetry, art and ordinary life. The capacity to remain open to preconscious and unconscious influences, and to be able to mentally represent these, is deemed essential for the generation of thought, as opposed to reflexive thinking and mimesis. The conditions for this generative, dialectical mental activity are considered. Through a clinical example of a psychoanalytic treatment of a highly disturbed young man, processes of destruction of generative thought by psychosis are discussed, and what is required for this destructive activity to be halted and reversed. Paramount amongst the analyst's forms of engagement with the patient is the employment of intuition as a means of identifying unconscious truths and of creating the conditions for a 'third' analytic position without which the growth of mind is not possible. © The author.