ABSTRACT

During the year 1952 I was asked to give two lectures on any subject I liked. Neither was published, and I am including parts of the second one as I see it as leading up to the next long paper, about symbolization, written in honour of Melanie Klein (see Chapter 9). The first one was given to the medical staff and nurses of the Cassell Hospital. I chose the subject ‘The Uses of Absentmindness’, thus again thinking about aspects of concentration. During the discussion everybody started telling me about the settings in which they were able to enjoy undirected thinking, reverie, or absentmindnesss. For one it was when she was using a vacuum cleaner; it made a sort of cocoon of sound. For one of the men it was when he was driving his car at a particular speed on a nice road, and of course for some of the men it was fishing.