A new set of possibilities can unsettle the poetic order, as it the social order—as when a poem doesn't look like a poem, which most often results in it not being published. Most poets struggle with this split between the True Self urge, as poet Sylvia Plath describes in a notebook, to "grow ingrown, queer, simply from indwelling and playing true

In Bion’s theory, the raw emotional data that the infant gives off are termed “beta elements,” which must then be ruminated on, metabolized by an “alpha function,” the mechanism of experiencing emotion from within, digesting it, and putting it back out in symbolized form. Alpha functions process beta elements so that they become available for

Psychoanalyst D. W. Winnicott considers play to be “the gateway to the unconscious,” which he divides into two parts: the repressed unconscious, which is to remain hidden, and the rest of the unconscious, which “each individual wants to get to know” by way of “play,” which, “like dreams, serves the function of self-revelation.”

But our tendency in daily life is to value thinking, the rule-driven syntax and facts about a person’s existence, over feeling. Those who foreground emotion, the way the mind moves, generally forgo the rewards—chief among them belonging—that accompany thinking that is easily calibrated with the thoughts of others.

The “development of an ability to think,” in Bion’s words, occurs as a way of coping with the thoughts that crystallize from frustrated feelings:

Unconscious communication is marked by laughter in clown and by emotion in psychoanalysis.

We all need slips from the unconscious to nudge us to take risks, align our outward selves with the interiors we desire.

It's difficult to resist the urge to play the part you imagine other people will find interesting or entertaining, the part you think will receive approval. We all want to be loved. The problem is that you're less likely to connect with others on an emotional level if you're leading with a prototype or idea, an ego communication, rather than with a

Communication that originates in the True Self, according to Winnicott, feels "real," whereas communication from the False Self does not. A similar distinction exists in the way a performer connects with the audience, and the audience, in turn, with the performer. If a performer's expressions feel honest, of the moment, rather than rehearsed, the