Forms of Inattention Within the Psychoanalytic Setting

Abstract

The term “attention” does not find a prominent place in Freudian-derived psychoanalysis, nor does the literature currently seem to devote, excuse the pun, much attention to it. In principle, a path could emerge that moves from Freud’s idea of “free-floating attention”, to proceed to the relationship between attention and interpretation as proposed by Wilfred Bion, and finally arrive at the concept of rêverie, developed above all by Thomas Ogden and of central interest for post Bionian developments. From a brief examination, one could say that psychoanalysis is more interested in dis-attention than in attention, or in any case in those transformations/alterations of the attentional sphere that signal entry onto the scene of the unconscious. The author tries to reflect on the various relationships that can exist between free-floating attention, rêverie and inattention, to then return on the light of this to the problem of interpretation: thus different ways of conceiving may emerge, precisely on the basis of the different types of attention that we bring into play during the analytic session.