Creative Stupidity

• Responses to First Learning about Affect Theory by Jim Duffy a.k.a. J.C.D., 2/28/97
  
  

When asked by colleagues or trainees about my own understanding of whatever success I've had as a therapist, I reply that I live with an attitude of "creative stupidity." The "method" involves a willingness to believe that the patient knows more about his/her condition than I, that I need to get as much information from the patient as possible, and that I consider the patient to be the ultimate authority on many matters. Of course, there does come a time when I have come to my own conclusion, and I prefer that the patient listen to me so we can go forward. But my attitude toward my own ideas is still part of this "creative stupidity," for I take for granted that the "new" idea of mine is an approximation of the truth. Do you remember how we learned to do square roots in grade school? You started with an approximation, squared it, then made sequential corrections until you got the best possible answer. That's how I approach therapy---mistakes are essential to my technique.

Naturally, that requires a special relation to shame. I attribute the success of therapy to the patient, the failures to me, and any errors to my status as a beginner.

Now about the process of learning affect theory----It is simply terrible when you start. I started in 1982 and found it so difficult that I called Vick Kelly and a couple of other friends to say that I needed help. Tomkins wrote so densely ("I write for myself," he told me over and over.) that none of us is able to get "everything" out of his work. The reason Vick and I set up the study group system was so people could group together to share their reactions to the material; that way, fewer associations are missed and more connections are made.

I don't know whether you've ever attended one of our October colloquia for the SSTI, but you may be amused to know that I refuse to be adressed as the expert in affect theory. I regard myself as the senior student and expect to remain so until I quit learning. I've never been shy about my own abilities---worked at the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, publishing my first research paper at 19, worked at the Rockefeller Institute on medical electronics a couple of years later---been around Nobel Laureates all my life as well as many whose work deserved that honor. Never thought of myself a whit different from any of them, and was often treated as one of that crowd. But in Tomkins I found a mind that towered above mine so far that I have characterized him as the American Einstein. Just as it is taking us a century to figure out everything Einstein gave us, it will take us a similar length of time to make Tomkins's observations completely understandable.

Welcome to the club formed by those of us who stand in awe of true greatness, and thank you for your willingness to join those of us who admit who we are relative to genius. To my knowledge, the writers and thinkers who have studied Tomkins the longest are the ones who stand most in awe of his contributions.

• Very Interesting, Don. by Jim Duffy, 3/2/97