Even attention

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Equal attention in the analytic session is Freud's most important technical rule for the psychoanalyst and describes how he should listen to the patient without giving preference to certain contents of his utterances: "You keep all conscious influences away from your memory and leave yourself completely to your own" unconscious memories', or to put it purely technically: Listen and don't care whether you remember something. "

Justification and description of the technology

According to Freud, the analyst should not only block out all disturbances in the outside world, but also put himself in a state of psychological relaxation and receptivity. It is particularly important not to follow personal inclinations and expectations, because otherwise the analyst runs the risk of “never finding anything else than one already knows.” Equal attention means the complete interruption of all that which usually attracts attention, and at the same time dealing exclusively with the analysand's statements . Even well-founded assumptions and theoretical knowledge should be switched off during the sessions of a psychoanalytic cure.

The counterpart of the evenly floating attention is - on the patient's side - the free association : The patient should say carefree what he is thinking and feeling - without choosing, without leaving anything out. It should not matter whether these thoughts and feelings are just embarrassing to the person being analyzed, whether they seem irrelevant or insignificant to him. According to Freud, this should enable the emergence of a very specific type of communication in psychoanalytic dialogue, namely, one from unconscious to unconscious. He describes the analyst's attitude as follows:

“He should turn his own unconscious towards the patient's giving unconscious as the receiving organ, adjust to the patient being analyzed as the receiver of the telephone is adjusted to the plate. Just as the receiver converts the electrical fluctuations in the line stimulated by sound waves back into sound waves, so the doctor's unconscious is able to restore this unconscious, which has determined the patient's ideas, from the descendants of the unconscious communicated to him. "

Further discussion

Theodor Reik introduced the concept of hearing with the third ear as the most important aspect of the analyst's listening, which would only be disturbed by logical inference. In contrast, Otto Fenichel emphasized a balance between allowing unconscious ideas to be granted and the necessary logical examination. This controversy and fine-tuning of the psychoanalytic attitude continues, e.g. B. between the positions of Alfred Lorenzer and Wolfgang Lochs . Significant expansions can then be found in Wilfred Bion's view that the evenly floating attention is aimed at the unknown in the transference, the not-knowing and through the connection to the concept of negative capability . Hermann Argelander understands the evenly floating attention as a change of attitude in the analyst through which what is being spoken of can be re-centered through unconscious contexts of meaning, whereby what is spoken gains further meaning.

literature

  • Sigmund Freud: Writings on treatment technology (= study edition. Vol. 11). 6th, corrected edition. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-10-822731-9 , p. 175 f.
  • Ralph R. Greenson : The Technique and Practice of Psychoanalysis. Hogarth Press, London 1967. Translated from English by Gudrun Theusner-Stampa: Technique and Practice of Psychoanalysis. 9th edition. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 2007. ISBN 978-3-608-94283-5 .
  • Hartmuth König: Attention floating in the same direction and modeling. A qualitative-systematic individual case study on the psychoanalyst's cognitive process. Ulmer Textbank, Ulm 2000.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Sigmund Freud: Advice for the doctor in psychoanalytic treatment [1912]. In: Collected Works - Chronologically sorted, Vol. VIII: Works from the years 1909-1913. Frankfurt / Main: Fischer, 1999, 376ff
  2. ^ Sigmund Freud: Advice for the doctor in psychoanalytic treatment [1912]. Study edition, supplementary volume, Frankfurt am Main, Fischer, special edition, 2000, pp. 175–176. ISBN 3-59650360-4
  3. ↑ cf. Hartmuth König: Attention floating evenly . In: Wolfgang Mertens , Bruno Waldvogel (Ed.): Handbook of basic psychoanalytical concepts. 3rd, revised. u. exp. Edition. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart, 2008, 261-265, pp. 261f. ISBN 978-3170172449
  4. ↑ cf. Hartmuth König: Attention floating evenly . In: Wolfgang Mertens, Bruno Waldvogel (Ed.): Handbook of basic psychoanalytical concepts. 3rd, revised. u. exp. Edition. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart, 2008, 261-265, p. 263
  5. ↑ cf. Hartmuth König: Attention floating evenly . In: Wolfgang Mertens, Bruno Waldvogel (Ed.): Handbook of basic psychoanalytical concepts. 3rd, revised. u. exp. Edition. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart, 2008, 261-265, p. 264