Creative Expressions of Despair. Resilience and Psychic Potentiality

Abstract

In the theory of Winnicott, a criterion of health is the psychic wealth. This is a concept not defined by the author, like so many others, that can be understood as the psychic ability to endure paradoxes. A capacity that starts from maternal care, which requires the maturity (evolutionary, non-chronological) of the baby. A skill that allows to maintain the subjective movement between the states of integration and non-integration of the subject. It also promotes the creativity of the baby in a possible space of play and exchange with the mother. Sometimes a traumatizing environment surrounds the individual and despite this, he manages to have creative expressions that show the psychic wealth. In these cases, where does the capacity called resilience come from? There are investigations that support the existence of primary unconscious motivations to solve problems and that the analytical link would allow them to develop them. Or considerations about a healthy capacity that would imply the existence of healthy unconscious potentials. In the present work we will address these situations of resilience. For this we will take the notion of restructuring bonding, where to the classical perspectives on the structuring value of the primary bond is added the restructuring potential of the secondary bonds. We will also take into account the conception of neuroplasticity. To explain these theoretical aspects, we will describe a clinical case of a 12-year-old adolescent with antisocial behaviors and a traumatic family history. In him, the existence of a healthy unconscious potentiality, repairing identifications and intense analytic work enabled the appearance of a creative act. A creative act that allowed him a libidinal and interrelational departure from his traumatic aspects.