Potential space is a concept associated with Donald Winnicott, describing an area of experience between inner life and shared reality in which play, creativity and cultural experience can occur.
It is not simply an empty space where anything imagined becomes true. It concerns an important meeting between what is personally experienced and what can be encountered with others.
The story isn’t happening to you. Something is happening in you.
A novel, a game or a piece of music can invite deep involvement without requiring you to mistake its world for literal events in the room.
That gives a useful starting point for understanding why imaginative experience can matter.
I AWAKE’s illustrated settings, stories and guided practices have a related interest in such participation. Winnicott’s concept offers background; it isn’t a claim that the books reproduce his clinical work.
Play explores activity with room for discovery. Imaginal practice describes the specific kind of guided encounter used in I AWAKE. The concepts can speak to each other without becoming identical.
The Winnicott Trust’s publications guide provides a route to his writing, including work on playing and experience. It is the better place to follow the concept into its original psychological context.