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....several things dovetailed in my mind, & at once it struck me, what quality went to form a Man of Achievement especially in Literature which Shakespeare possessed so enormously — I mean NEGATIVE CAPABILITY, that is when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason — ~John Keats
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What is Negative Capability? As you greet it here, it's a sort of interstitial hallway where a few friends meet. A presence that hopes to live up to Keats's original meaning when he first used the term Negative Capability. We are friends who have written for years now, and we all met through an interest in Jung.
Jung seems the essence of Negative Capability. A man who was willing to speak to and listen to all that it is to exist: the dreams and hopes, the irrational fears and joys; that bond of the deep bedrock that we all carry, both the consciousness, and the unconscious -- an unconscious that is always present, there with its hand on all we do. Jung denied none of the experience of his life, and it's his honest example that helps us look in all things for that intelligent sphere whose center is everywhere and circumference nowhere. That frees us with the honest admission that no one "Knows" -- yet also understands that each heart's knowing is as good an anyone's. We embrace the gift of that gnosis, and share it as a gift of the heart to other hearts...
Jung, criticized even in some analytical circles for his 'new age', magic-leaning interpretations, was a doctor first, and like his early mentor Freud (and William James, for that matter), he applied the principles of biological systems to the psyche. Hence, the term unconscious rather than subconscious: the unconscious isn't 'below' anything, but is a vital, ever-present part of being human; one is just un-conscious of it. His twenty volumes of work reflect this path of study. The function of art, the language of dreams—such studies roll naturally from an empiricism grounded and centered in this perspective.
"... the individual as the only carrier of life and existence is of paramount importance. He cannot be substituted by a group or by a mass. Yet we are rapidly approaching a state in which nobody will accept individual responsibility any more. We prefer to leave it as an odious business to groups and organizations, blissfully unconscious of the fact that the group or mass psyche is that of an animal and wholly inhuman. What we need is the development of the inner spiritual man, the unique individual whose treasure is hidden on the one hand in the symbols of our mythological tradition, and on the other hand in man's unconscious psyche." CGJUNG
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