Creative Indifference is a term in Gestalt Therapy to describe a state of unbiased awareness. Creative can mean the doing of something artistic: that comes from the heart not the head.
Here it means a familiarity: a yearning for emotional contact but not being able to connect.
What Freud called the “uncanny”. Something special in the ordinary.
This may occur when sitting with a person, paying attention, and they communicate something to you: which you can feel but is just out of reach. This psyche appears to work in layers. So conscious debris has to be pushed away to uncover what cannot be reached underneath. See this Case Study where no judgement is placed on missed sessions. Rather an attention to understanding what missing might mean.
Indifference here is not uncaring. But a neutral attention that carries no weight or prejudice. For example when you read the words “giver and taker” you immediately ascribe a positive value to giver and a negative value to taker. But nothing is so simple when we are taught/influenced. This indifference allows something in sense to come up detached from value, bias, prejudice so that it can emerge liberated from repression.
Copyright Adrian Scott North London Counsellor Blog 2024
All rights reserved Disclaimer:
This weblog is the view of the writer and for general information only.
This article is designed to provoke argument and critique
Details changed for confidentiality