“Negative capability”: managing the confusing uncertainties of change
Journal of Organizational Change Management
ISSN: 0953-4814
Article publication date: 1 October 2001
Abstract
Explores how psychoanalytic thinking can contribute to the management of the conflicting emotions stimulated by change. Suggests that successful change management depends on a combination of “positive” and “negative” capabilities. The positive capabilities involve the management of the substantive content of any change initiative, the change process itself, and the roles and procedures required by both of these. However, even when these three “technical” aspects are well managed, change always arouses anxiety and uncertainty. As a result, there is a tendency to “disperse” energy; that is, to be deflected from the task into a range of avoidance tactics. Through a particular understanding of such “dispersal” and its opposite, the “capacity to contain”, psychoanalysis can suggest how this counterproductive tendency may be more effectively managed. The British psychoanalyst Wilfred Bion called this capacity to contain “negative capability”.
Keywords
Citation
French, R. (2001), "“Negative capability”: managing the confusing uncertainties of change", Journal of Organizational Change Management, Vol. 14 No. 5, pp. 480-492. https://doi.org/10.1108/EUM0000000005876
Publisher
:MCB UP Ltd
Copyright © 2001, MCB UP Limited