The resilience of potential space

Abstract

This article draws on my experiences as a participant in two different but related methodology workshops, a social photo matrix (SPM) and a social dream drawing (SDD) workshop. The notion of potential space is used as a lens through which to make sense of alienation within contemporary places of work. I take seriously the suggestion that creativity is essential in all meaningful life and explore how play can be used to help make contemporary organisations more humane and, in the long term, more productive. I suggest, specifically, that it is by letting go of an obsession with "reality" and a concomitant paralysing fear of play that organisational members can come to connect, first with themselves and then with others. I draw on object relations and social defence theory to suggest that current attacks on creativity are indicative of collective paranoid–schizoid functioning. The resilience of potential spaces, on the other hand, is evidence of an inherent human need for growth and capacity for depressive functioning.