The Psychoanalytic Quarterly

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Brief Communication: Evenly Hovering Attention

Charles Brenner

To cite this article: Charles Brenner (2000) Brief Communication: Evenly Hovering Attention,
The Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 69:3, 545-549, DOI: 10.1002/j.2167-4086.2000.tb00574.x
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1002/j.2167-4086.2000.tb00574.x

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Psychoanalytic Quarterly, LXIX, 2000

BRIEF COMMUNICATION:
EVENLY HOVERING ATTENTION

BY CHARLES BRENNER, M.D.

No statement about psychoanalytic technique is more frequently cited

than Freud’s recommendation that analysts listen to their patients
with evenly hovering or suspended attention (gleichschwebende Aufmerk-
samkeit in German) and depend on their unconscious to do the rest.
In view of its wide currency, this precept for analytic listening seems
to me to deserve closer attention than it has been given until now.
Freud first expressed the idea in 1912:

The technique...is a very simple one.… It consists simply in

not directing one’s notice to anything in particular and in
maintaining the same “evenly-suspended attention”...in the
face of all that one hears.… If the doctor behaves otherwise,
he is throwing away most of the advantage which results from
the patient’s obeying the “fundamental rule of psychoanaly-
sis.” The rule for the doctor may be expressed: “He should
withhold all conscious influences from his capacity to attend,
and give himself over completely to his ‘unconscious mem-
ory.’ ” Or, to put it purely in terms of technique: “He should
simply listen, and not bother about whether he is keeping
anything in mind.” [pp. 111-112]

He repeated the recommendation in 1923, in somewhat differ-

ent words and with a slight addition:

Experience soon showed that the attitude which the analytic

physician could most advantageously adopt was to surrender
himself to his own unconscious mental activity, in a state of
evenly suspended attention, to avoid so far as possible reflec-

545
546 CHARLES BRENNER

tion and the construction of conscious expectations, not to

try to fix anything that he heard particularly in his memory,
and by these means to catch the drift of the patient’s uncon-
scious with his own unconscious. It was then found that, ex-
cept under conditions that were too unfavorable, the patient’s
associations emerged like allusions, as it were, to one par-
ticular theme and that it was only necessary for the physician
to go a step further in order to guess the material which was
concealed from the patient himself and to be able to com-
municate it to him. It is true that this work of interpretation
was not to be brought under strict rules and left a great deal
of play to the physician’s tact and skill; but, with impartiality
and practice, it was usually possible to obtain trustworthy
results—that is to say, results which were confirmed by being
repeated in similar cases. At a time when so little was as yet
known of the unconscious, the structure of the neuroses and
the pathological processes underlying them, it was a matter
for satisfaction that a technique of this kind should be avail-
able, even if it had no better theoretical basis. Moreover it is
still employed in analysis at the present day in the same man-
ner, though with a sense of greater assurance and with a bet-
ter understanding of its limitations. [p. 239]

The reader will note the last sentence. Here Freud implied that
by 1923, his technique had evolved somewhat, though the precise
meaning of the sentence is far from clear. If, however, we turn to a
later article, we find a much clearer statement of Freud’s view of the
ways in which psychoanalytic technique in the early twenties differed
from that of ten years earlier.

The analyst, who listens composedly but without any con-

strained effort to the stream of associations and who, from
his experience, has a general notion of what to expect, can
make use of the material brought to light by the patient ac-
cording to two possibilities. If the resistance is slight he will
be able from the patient’s allusions to infer the unconscious
material itself; or if the resistance is stronger he will be able
to recognize its character from the associations, as they seem
to become more remote from the topic in hand and will
explain it to the patient. [1925, p. 41]
 EVENLY HOVERING ATTENTION 547
In this passage, instead of “evenly hovering attention” that leads
to an understanding of the patient’s unconscious wishes via one’s own
unconscious, what Freud gives us is an early or preliminary statement
of the importance of listening to the interplay between wish and de-
fense. It is the first indication of the change in technique that reached
clear expression some ten years later in The Ego and the Mechanisms
of Defence, with the technical admonition that the analyst should
pay equal attention to each of the three aspects of conflict, aspects
subsumed at that time under the headings ego, superego, and id (A.
Freud 1936). Although S. Freud’s name does not appear as coauth-
or of The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defence, there is every reason to
believe that, at the very least, he reviewed and concurred with every
important idea contained in it.
According to Kris (1950), the first analysis Freud conducted that
was comparable in length to those with which we are currently famil-
iar was that of the Wolfman (Freud 1918). His analysis lasted for four
years. It was, according to Kris, the first analysis of which there is any
record of an attempt being made to deal with a patient’s defenses at
length and analytically. If Kris’s account is reliable, it is of particular
interest that Freud’s description of the analysis was that it was marked
by “an excessively long process of preparatory education,” as though
dealing with the patient’s defenses was preparatory to the real analy-
sis (Freud 1918, p. 104).
I believe that, in fact, Freud’s ideas about this aspect of analytic
technique evolved over a period of years as his experience grew. He
began with the idea that an analyst listens to a patient with the expec-
tation that the nature of the patient’s unconscious sexual ideas and
fixations will become clear as the patient talks, since the patient has
been instructed that it is essential in analysis to say everything that
comes to mind. Freud’s idea was that if a patient does that, if she or
he “free associates,” the listening analyst will perceive (= intuitively
grasp) the nature of the patient’s pathogenic sexual wishes and fixa-
tions, despite the patient’s unconscious resistance to revealing them.
They will be distorted and disguised, but the analyst, listening with
evenly hovering attention, will be able to guess what they are and to
acquaint the patient with the hidden meaning of the patient’s pro-
548 CHARLES BRENNER

ductions (= “free associations”). By 1910-1914 (the years of the Wolf-

man’s analysis), Freud realized the importance of addressing a pa-
tient’s defenses, rather than just circumventing them or trying, as it
were, to outwit them by guessing at the sexual wishes they were de-
fending against.
It was not yet clear to Freud, however, how dealing with a patient’s
defenses is related to analysis. He apparently thought of it then as
something pre-analytic, as some sort of preparatory, educational work
that might be necessary in some cases to make analysis possible. By
1925, though, what he wrote was much more in line with our current
practice: in listening to a patient, one pays attention now to defense,
now to what is defended against, depending on which is apparent in
a patient’s communications. From there, it was not too great a step
to the position that analyzing defenses is as much a part of analysis
as is analyzing what is defended against (A. Freud 1936).
In line with this view of the development of Freud’s ideas on ana-
lytic technique, it is worth noting that as late as the 1930s, one of the
criteria of analyzability was a patient’s ability to “free associate.” A
patient who could not “free associate” was considered unsuitable for
analysis. The idea that someone’s difficulty in talking freely might or
should be analyzed was either not understood, or, if somehow under-
stood, was not, even then, comprehended clearly enough to be taken
into account in assessing a prospective patient’s analyzability.
In summary, I have tried to show that Freud’s oft-repeated recom-
mendation that analysts should listen to their patients with evenly
hovering attention represents no more than a step in the develop-
ment of psychoanalytic technique. I suggest that, if taken literally, it
is by now as out of date as, for example, the idea he had at the same
time that neurotic anxiety is soured libido. Early on, Freud believed
that an analyst could listen to a patient’s associations without expec-
tation and without conscious effort, secure in the belief that the
analyst’s unconscious would understand the patient’s unconscious
as a matter of course. As time went on, however, and as his experi-
ence grew, Freud’s views on listening changed. The position he took
eventually was the one most clearly expressed by A. Freud, namely,
that an analyst should listen to every aspect of a patient’s conflicts:
 EVENLY HOVERING ATTENTION 549
to the sexual and aggressive wishes, to the anxiety associated with
those wishes, to the defenses against them, and to the demands and
prohibitions he subsumed under the heading of the superego. Those
analysts who still believe that evenly hovering attention is the proper
analytic attitude are, I believe, mistaken in citing Freud in support
of that belief.

REFERENCES

Freud, A. (1936). The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defence: The Writings of
Anna Freud, Vol. 2. New York: Int. Univ. Press, 1966.
Freud, S. (1912). Recommendations to physicians practicing psycho-analy-
sis. S. E., 12:111-120.
——— (1918). From the history of an infantile neurosis. S. E., 17:7-122.
——— (1923). Two encyclopedia articles. S. E., 18:235-254.
——— (1925). An autobiographical study. S. E., 20:7-74.
Kris, E. (1950). Personal communication.

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