Edinburgh Napier University

  The very term ‘ethics’ falters unhelpfully in its usage. On a common sense level, we all know what we mean when we hear or use the term but in practice it signifies both a mode of responding and, increasingly, a set of guidelines or strictures which advise upon or govern our responding. Not only are these different usages of the term different, they are, arguably, in opposition to each other. This presentation will consider this opposition and the extent to which it might be configured as productive, rather than simply contradictory. It will do this by drawing on John Keats’s famous rumination on ‘negative capability’ and Jacques Lacan’s pronouncements on ethics in his seventh seminar, working to establish an understanding of the relationship between regulation and responsibility and what this might mean for therapeutic practice.