BJAA Summer Gathering Presentation – ABSENCE AND CREATIVITY with Ana Martinez Acobi

Drawing largely from the psychoanalytic work of Jung, Bion and Winnicott, from Plato and Whitehead, and from her clinical experience, Ana will explore ‘Absence’ and ‘Creativity’. Bringing together absence, creativity and future with Plato’s concept of the ‘Receptacle’ as described in the Timaeus and with Whitehead’s development of it, Ana examines containment as process. The term ‘Emergent Container’ has been coined as the metaphorical and metaphysical space where the interplay between potentiality and actuality meet in the process of emergent reality. As absence emerges as experience  so does the potential for creativity. If not,  there often follows the experience of emptiness and the compulsion to fill emptiness with hallucination. Absence as it plays into the experience of containment is a key factor in the developmental and psychoanalytic process.

These ideas are from Ana’s book: The Emergent Container in Psychoanalysis: Experiencing Absence and Future, published by Routledge last October.

Note: All bpf members are warmly welcome to attend, and please do stay for lunch (from 1:00-1:45). If staying for lunch, please bring something savoury or sweet to share. Ana’s presentation will follow the BJAA’s Business Meeting (for BJAA members only – from 9:45-11:15).

Event programme: 

9:45- 11:15: BJAA Business meeting

11:15 – 11:30: Coffee break

11:30- 13:00: Ana Martinez Acobi's presentation

13:00-14:00: Lunch

About the speaker

Ana Martinez Acobi is a Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist and Training Therapist in private practice (WPF), BPC and FPC, as well as a Scholar Clinician (BPC). She also trained as a Psychodynamic Counsellor (WPF) and holds an honours degree in Psychology from Goldsmiths’ University, London.

 Ana’s interest  lies in the interplay between psychoanalysis and metaphysics.