We accumulate a great deal throughout our lives. It can look like a garage filled with junk, or it could be thoughts, emotions, memories, questions, ideas, and unfinished experiences that occupy our internal world. Sometimes these experiences are fleeting, in which they come in and out. At other times, thoughts, feelings and memories can linger, or float around internally, demanding our attention.
Where do we put them?
A receptacle is something that holds or receives. We might think of a receptacle as a bowl, a box, a vessel, or a container. Yet receptacles also exist conceptually, emotionally, and creatively. A journal can be a place that holds our thoughts. A meaningful, connecting conversation can hold our grief. A sketchbook can hold dreams that haven't yet taken shape. Having a place to put something doesn't mean we're trying to get rid of it. At times we need somewhere for it to exist and rest.
The Psychology of Containment
In psychology, the idea of emotional containment has roots in psychoanalytic theory. British psychoanalyst Wilfred Bion introduced the concept of the container-contained, describing how difficult emotional experiences can become more manageable when they are received, understood, and processed within a supportive relationship. A lot of psychotherapy entails supportive containment.
Similarly, psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott explored the importance of a holding environment, emphasizing how emotional security and supportive relationships contribute to psychological development.
These ideas point to something important: we don't need to immediately resolve or fix our emotional experiences. First and foremost we need a place where they can be acknowledged and held.
A trusted relationship, a therapeutic encounter, or even a private creative practice can offer different forms of this experience.
Creative Receptacles
I often think of Artists as people who out of sheer necessity, develop novel ways of organizing, presenting, storing and disseminating their work. These are creative receptacles. A notebook filled with sketches, a collection of photographs, a melody recorded on a voice not e, or a box of seemingly unrelated objects are repositories for our curiosity.
Winnicott also explored the relationship between play and creativity, describing an intermediate space between our inner and outer worlds where exploration can occur. Creative receptacles might be understood as one practical way of making room for play and experimentation, as adults.
Research on expressive writing offers another relevant perspective. Psychologist James Pennebaker and colleagues have investigated how putting emotional experiences into words can, under certain circumstances, support psychological processing and well-being. Practices such as Morning Pages, an exercise developed by Julia Cameron offers a form of processing and containment by way of unstructured writing first thing in the morning. The larger invitation is to consider how externalizing an experience—putting words, images, objects, or movement somewhere—might change our relationship with it.
Making Room
We live in a culture that often encourages productivity, solutions, and closure. Even our emotional lives can become projects where we are compelled to resolve and feel some sense of completeness. We may feel compelled to explain our sadness, overcome our anxiety, or transform every creative impulse into something useful. Some experiences simply need a place to reside. A receptacle can give us permission to set something down without abandoning it. We can return to it when we're ready and examine it from another perspective, or allow it to remain unfinished.
A receptacle isn't about housing something permanently, but to create enough space for us to choose as to how we want to relate to it .
Draw a Receptacle
Using a pencil or pen and draw a receptacle that could hold something meaningful.
It might resemble a bowl, a house, a pocket, a cave, or something entirely imaginary. What will it hold?
As you draw, consider:
Is there something I’m holding that needs a place to go?
What qualities does the receptacle need to have? Strength, openness, flexibility, protection?
Does what I’m holding need to be preserved, transformed, shared, or eventually released?
References and Further Reading
Bion, W. R. (1962). Learning from Experience. Heinemann.
Winnicott, D. W. (1960). The theory of the parent-infant relationship. International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 41, 585–595.
Winnicott, D. W. (1971). Playing and Reality. Tavistock Publications.
Pennebaker, J. W. (1997). Writing about emotional experiences as a therapeutic process. Psychological Science, 8(3), 162–166.