The Curiosity Drive

Engaging, challenging, peppered with fresh ideas about the developing mind, organisations, and individual and couple relationships, this book is as lively as it is informative, as enjoyable as it is profound. Steeped in psychoanalytic thinking and enriched by systems theory and Shakespeare, the work is an inspiring expression of the author’s own curiosity and capacity for original and creative thought.

-- R. Peter Hobson, Emeritus Tavistock Professor of Developmental Psychopathology, UCL

Building on Bion’s positing of the necessity to add the urge for knowledge (K), to the urge to love (L), and the urge to hate (H), as the third primary human emotion, Philip Stokoe’s starting point, and central focus of this book, is that “curiosity … is central to the development and the maintenance of the mind”. He suggests that from early on infant development is driven by inquisitive thinking about their experiences and states of mind.
‘In a truly encyclopaedic re-examination of the Klein/Bion tradition of psychoanalytic theorising, Stokoe demonstrates his view that, by focusing on the curiosity drive in the course of human development, our understanding of the growth of the mind is significantly changed and that this change is crucial to our understanding of how human beings behave and relate to each other.
‘The book has depth in its theoretical explorations and breadth in its descriptions of the applications of that theorising, and will be of great interest both to those wanting to learn about the development of psychoanalytic thinking concerning human development, and to experienced practitioners who will be encouraged and enabled to apply that orientation to work with individual patients, with groups, and with institutions.

-- Stanley Ruszczynski, psychoanalyst and Consultant Adult Psychotherapist (and past Director, 2005–2016), Portman Clinic

Freud (1915, p. 194) wrote of the young child “working with the energy of curiosity” in seeking to extend himself in the domain of knowledge. For this impulsion he used the term Wißtrieb, a term that subsequently has been translated variously as an “impulse to investigate”, “epistemophilia”, “a drive towards knowledge”, and even the complex and problematic notion of a “truth drive”. In researching the subject with depth and breadth, in his own way and very much using his own voice, Philip Stokoe has worked with the energy of his own curiosity – a curiosity operating in several fields at the same time. Bringing together his experience and knowledge of psychoanalysis, theatre, and the workings of human groups, he has made a study of the subject with many discoveries. It will stimulate the hunger for new knowledge in a wide variety of readers, and by no means only those working in the fields of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis. As he implies at the outset, the term “application”, in relation to psychoanalytic ideas, can be used in an unhelpfully divisive way. I prefer to see his writing as bringing out, and articulating, the already-existing psychoanalytic, dramaturgical, and group-mentality dimensions of the phenomena. He does this to harness the normally occurring intransitive use of the term “being curious” to another specific function, that is to say the study of thinking. In this respect I rather like the sub-title of his book: “Our Need for Inquisitive Thinking”. Never before has this need been so pressing, in a time when an election has been fought by a political movement explicitly and openly antithetical to research and a scientific outlook.
Philip Stokoe is to be commended not only for writing such an interesting and well-informed book on such a crucial subject, but also for being willing to engage with its political ramifications.

-- Chris Mawson, training and supervising analyst of the British Psychoanalytical Society

Philip Stokoe has the gift of describing ideas which appear stunning in their novelty and originality whilst at the same time resonating with something we may intuitively have known but have until now been unable to quite put our finger upon or to articulate. [...] The breadth and scope of the ideas contained within these pages makes this a book for those with an interest in how we relate and function as a species, within groups and as individuals, in addition to those working in clinical and organisational settings. It is a book for the curious and seekers of meaningful ways to understand the dilemmas faced in everyday life and work.

-- Jo O’Reilly, Psychoanalyst and Consultant Psychiatrist in Medical Psychotherapy

The Curiosity Drive sets you thinking and exploring your own thoughts, as you become curious. The title is therefore apt. I enjoyed reading the book and found it difficult to put down/ It would make a valuable addition to the library of anyone who is interested in how we think, including therapists from any modality or those interested in personal development.

-- Jo Sansby, BACP Healthcare Counselling and Psychotherapy Journal Jan