The Curiosity Drive: Our Need for Inquisitive Thinking [Paperback]

After eighteen frustrating months heading a specialist adolescent unit, Philip Stokoe applied for a training in consultation at the Tavistock Clinic based on the 'Tavi' aka 'group relations' model. This experience changed his life and, ultimately, led to this book, The Curiosity Drive: Our Need for Inquisitive Thinking. Embedding the training into his working life, Stokoe came to recognise the crucial importance of curiosity to the development of the mind. Alongside love and hate, it is a primary drive inside each of us. Without the desire to 'know', human evolution would take a very different path. Philip Stokoe outlines the work of Freud, Klein, and Bion to provide a firm foundation to his exploration of individual development and how it relates to groups and organisations. He lays bare why so many organisations are dysfunctional, takes an in- depth look at the problems unique to psychoanalytic institutions, and gives clear insight into how groups function as a separate entity to the individuals involved. He also investigates curiosity's shadow side, detailing the 'alternative' processes needed when it becomes a problem. This is a truly excellent book for trainees, professionals, and anyone who has ever been frustrated by work! 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 Wiatrieb, 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 subjel“L