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A Piece of My Mind
December 26, 2017
JAMA. 2017;318(24):2429-2430. doi:10.1001/jama.2017.19333
On December 21, 1817, John Keats wrote to his brothers George and Tom about a literary discussion he had recently had with the critic Charles Dilke, after which “several things dove-tailed in my mind.”1 Keats continued, “At once it struck me what quality went to form a Man of Achievement, especially in Literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously—I mean Negative Capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable searching after fact and reason.”1
The young physician then went on to cite Samuel Taylor Coleridge as a poet whom he considered deficient in negative capability because he was “incapable of remaining content with half-knowledge.”1 What exactly did Keats mean? That Coleridge was too curious or too intellectual to be a great poet? We’ll never know because Keats, who died of tuberculosis less than four years later, never referred to negative capability again, either in his letters or other writings.
A single mention in a private letter is not much of a pedigree. Nevertheless, Keats’ casual turn of phrase has generated many writings by others in the centuries that followed. Literary critics generally interpret negative capability to mean being open to the world without having preconceived theories, a willingness to suspend judgment, or the ability to function imaginatively in the face of incomplete knowledge. Notable psychoanalysts and philosophers have championed the importance of negative capability in their own fields. In fact, with the enthusiasm of a dilettante who knows little about literary criticism, I too have argued that negative capability is an important quality for clinicians to develop.2
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