Tolerating the unknown — what exploring the unconscious actually requires
The desire to know where we are going is precisely what makes it impossible to go there.
Exploring the unconscious is not a journey with a known destination. It requires the capacity to bear uncertainty — to move without a map, to sit with anxiety rather than resolve it.
The explorer
It happens regularly. A person arrives saying they want to explore their unconscious. Two or three weeks pass. Then: I don’t know where we are going. What is the plan?
The desire to know where we are going is precisely what makes it impossible to go there.
Think of someone setting out into unmapped jungle in the 1930s. No knowledge of what they will find. No certainty about the route. The condition of that exploration is the willingness to be lost, to encounter the unexpected. Exploring the unconscious is the same. If you need a map before you take a step, you will not move.
The anxiety of not knowing where you are going is not a sign that something is wrong. It is the process. Learning to bear that anxiety — to remain curious rather than alarmed — is one of the most significant things that happens in analysis.
The illusion of certainty
We construct our lives around the assumption of certainty. Consider travelling to work on a Tuesday morning. You leave on time, take the usual route. And yet you do not actually know whether you will arrive. Certainty is something we tell ourselves, because the alternative — living honestly with the fundamental unknowability of the next moment — is anxiety-provoking in a way most people prefer not to feel.
Analysis asks you to feel it. Not to manufacture crisis, but to be honest about what is already true.
“You say you want to explore the unconscious, and then after three weeks you ask me where we are going. But an explorer who needs to know the destination before they leave has not yet understood what exploration means. The anxiety of not knowing — that is not the obstacle. That is the work.” — Philippe Jacquet
Book a consultation with Philippe Jacquet — psychotherapist and Jungian analyst, London.