Abstract

This study was designed to investigate negative capability, the ability to dwell with anxiety through facing it creatively. Three adult subjects participated, writing a description of a personal experience of sustaining anxiety and then in a taped interview which was analysed using a phenomenological method described by Giorgi . The results revealed 3 developmental movements in the process of negative capability: Disintegration/strategies--a disruption of one's prereflective world occurs when a disintegration of some unrealistic belief, value and self image begins to happen. One responds by using strategies designed to escape into past perceived determinations and mistakes and/or future implausible resolutions rather than directly dwelling upon the present complexities of the imposed situation. Crisis/necessity--The ineffectiveness of the strategies eventually becomes inevitable and the bad feelings mount to crisis proportions. Through the collapse of old beliefs and expectations, an urgent necessity forces confrontation with the painful provoking situation. Surrender/adaptation--One begins to dwell in the present in a different way. A shift in awareness, perception, feelings and attitude occurs in such a way that genuine objective solutions to the crisis become imaginable and new action possible. The study concludes that sustaining anxiety can create personal transformation and that negative capability is learned by experiencing "bad faith" solutions through which one moves to "good faith" solutions