ABSTRACT
Freud stressed the importance of a mental attitude removed of preconceptions and self-censoring; to make available for thought and feeling whatever comes to mind, via “free association” and “free floating attention”. One must control urges for focus, formulation, and action, all of which reduce anxiety and uncertainty, but narrow psychic range and behavioral options. Pursued or conspicuously avoided, pleasing or displeasing, attention-getting features in people’s narratives, the enactments they play out, and the tactics and techniques that the people therapists employ. Originating and continuing as expressions of helplessness and frustration, self-defeating AGMs mutate into antagonistic instruments of relief, retribution, and reparation. In giving attention to the felt deficits in receiving attention, and in giving attention to displays of self-defeating AGMs, there is redress, deeply felt, and more authentic than explanations, apologies, or profusions of love. Ferenczi suggests that neurosis represents spontaneous attempts at self-healing.
