Free-Floating Attention
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Where it appears in the corpus (2)
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#01
Against Understanding, Volume 1: Commentary and Critique in a Lacanian Key · Bruce Fink · p.29
**The Symbolic Is Centered on Nonmeaning and Nonsense**
Theoretical move: Operating in the symbolic register means attending to the letter of the analysand's discourse rather than filtering speech through imaginary, me-centered understanding; this distinction—between hearing what is actually said (including nonsense and ambiguity) versus grasping pragmatic meaning-for-us—is the clinical foundation of free-floating attention and the analyst's capacity to catch material that would otherwise slip by.
This requires free-floating attention, not me-floating or me-centered attention, which is the kind we are so used to paying in everyday life.
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#02
Écrits: The First Complete Edition in English · Jacques Lacan · p.411
The Situation of Psychoanalysis and the Training of Psychoanalysts in 1956
Theoretical move: Lacan argues that the unconscious is structured like a language—governed by the primacy of the signifier over the signified and by overdetermination as syntax—and that this symbolic order, which is extimate to man (outside him yet constituting him), cannot be reduced to naturalist materialism, neurological automatism, or Jungian archetype; only psychoanalysis, properly grounded in linguistics, can force recognition of this primacy.
the term 'free-floating' does not imply fluctuation, but rather evenness of level—this is emphasized by the German term, 'gleichschwebende'