Mark Carrigan

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Capaciousness as a sociological category

I’ve been wondering recently how Winnicott’s idea of capaciousness, summarised here by Brooke Hopkins, might be incorporated into sociological thought:

“The development of a capacity for” is one of Winnicott’s most characteristic formulations: a “capacity for concern” (1963a), a “capacity to be alone” (1958b), a “capacity for a sense of guilt” (158a). However, “capacity” is not, for Winnicott, a casually chosen term. “The poetry of etymology” reminds us, as it must have reminded Winnicott, that the English word “capacity” derives from the Latin capere, meaning “to hold, to contain,” and is related to the adjective capax, which means “roomy or capacious.” In addition, “capacity” shares its Latin root with the English words “capable” and “capability,” able to do things, the ability to do things (like “potential”). “The emphasis on capacity in his work allows for individual differences,” Adam Phillips remarks: “‘capacity’, with its implication of stored possibility, and its combination of the receptive and the generative, blurs the boundary between activity and passivity” (1988, p. 58). It also suggests that there is a relationship between the ability (the capacity) to hold or to hold in and the ability to do something, that the two are, somehow, contained in one another, contained in the word itself when the word is re-embodied through a deeper understanding of its root. This is what Winnicott means when he talks about “the poetry of etymology,” its ability to put us in touch with the concreteness of a word, the character it may have had at an earlier stage of its history.

The concept of space, “inner” space (capaciousness), is essential to this exploration. According to Winnicott, such capaciousness is not something human beings are born with, except potentially. It is something that has to be nurtured over time and within a facilitating environment that trusts itself enough to allow the maturational processes to follow their course. This notion of capacity is a developmental one. It takes time.

https://psyartjournal.com/article/show/hopkins_phd-winnicott_and_the_capacity_to_believe

It complicates the relationship between reflexivity and dispositionality in an interesting way, highlighting how the former requires a developmental foundation in the latter. It would be interesting to turn to Dewey in this context as well, whose identification of the reflexive component to habit, operates in a parallel way.

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