Jamie Crabb has a conversation with Rich and Tim on the Messy Social Work podcast on suffering, care, and staying with what we don’t yet understand on13/4/26
- Jamie Crabb
- Apr 19
- 3 min read
Updated: Apr 20
Following my contemplation at Somerville College on care and being seen in the presence of the enigmatic [recording], I was invited to join Rich Devine and Tim Fisher on the Messy Social Work podcast, where we explored suffering, care, and staying with what we don’t yet understand in this conversation.
We explored ideas from Jean Laplanche, a twentieth-century French psychoanalyst, particularly the notion that aspects of our experience arrive enigmatically, carrying meanings that are not immediately available to us, but which continue to shape us.
In the conversation, we explored suffering, care, and staying with what we don’t yet understand. The conversation allowed something different to happen. We spoke about:
how care can falter, even in well-intentioned systems
the difficulty of staying with affect that cannot be quickly resolved
the temptation to move too quickly to explanation, reassurance, or intervention
how enigmatic messages that have not been sufficiently translated may be experienced as parts of our identity that are no longer serving us
the work of detranslating emotional inheritance, unconsciously implanted from our parents/ancestors/the social world
If you’ve already watched the contemplation, Care, and Being Seen in the Presence of the Enigmatic, this conversation extends and reworks some of those ideas.
If you’re coming to this first, you might listen for what resonates, what unsettles, or what stays with you and with the question:
"What does it ask of us, in practice, to remain with what we, or those we are working with, do not yet understand?"
I'm grateful to Rich for choosing The Guest House by Jalaluddin Rumi to both end and bring together our conversation, which I share here:
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
A few ideas that inform the contemplation and podcast discussion
The enigmatic
Refers to aspects of our experience that cannot be easily understood, explained, or translated into language. These are often felt in the body as affect, tension, or disturbance before they can be thought.
Enigmatic signifiers
Laplanche suggests that from early in life, we are shaped by messages from others that we cannot fully understand. He calls this primal seduction, not to imply harm or intention, but to name the fundamental situation of being a child in relation to adults whose words, gestures, tones, and presences carry meanings that exceed what the child, and even the adult, can make sense of.
These messages, which he calls enigmatic signifiers, arrive before we have the language or capacity to translate them. They are felt in the body as something confusing, charged, or unresolved. Because of this, aspects of our experience remain partially untranslated. They continue to live on in us, asking to be worked on, returned to, or lived with.
The unconscious
Not simply something within us, but something formed through our encounters with others, often without their knowing. It is shaped by what is transmitted to us, often enigmatically, in early relationships and the social world. For example, understandings of family, gender, etc.
Detranslation / retranslation
Laplanche’s idea is that part of psychic life involves attempting to make sense of these enigmatic messages. Some aspects can be gradually understood (retranslated), while others remain unresolved and must be lived with.
Care
Not only support or intervention, but the capacity to remain present with another person’s experience, especially when it is unclear, uncomfortable, or cannot be easily resolved.
References and influences
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