SM 102

Potential space

The concept of an imaginative ‘potential space’ was created by psychoanalyst and child psychologist D. W. Winnicott.  Associated with his concept of transitional objects, it is the imaginative space between the internal and externality of human beings.  Originally a medical term, it described the space between bodily structures that are in close proximity but not firmly attached, which in normal functioning would not appear as space but could potentially do so due to trauma.

Potential space is possibly the space in which this writing was created.  The space in which the studio work was formed, and where it resides as concepts, as opposed to the impossible real object of external, separate and material reality.  It is the space where the process of consciousness occurs and meaning is produced, identity is created and transformation takes place; a space that exists only as the liminal potential between internal human experience and the environment in which it is immersed.