and now “talking therapy” is a term widely used in public discourses. In relation to

practitioner from the bondage of concepts and words, thereby rendering talking

unnecessary, whereas psychoanalysis, as the original talking therapy, is “full of

words” so to speak. Does that mean they are diametrically opposite? To pursue this

question, it is useful to consider the idea of silence and listening in the practice of

both disciplines.

<<Psychoanalysts (and other therapists)… create and hold the free silence in which

the subjects of the process may struggle to name themselves... During my brief

strange and beautiful thing. So many people, when I have asked them about

positive experiences of silence, have mentioned this psychoanalytic silence...>>

(Maitland, 2008, p. 248, emphasis added)

Many analysts would agree that such silence is part of the analytic concept of “evenly

hovering attention” which Freud recommends. In the case of mindfulness, silence is

central to its practice, as staying in the present with an unoccupied mind requires a

wordless listening that encompasses all that there is, leading to an experience of inner

silence in the context of psychotherapy. While it is not my intention to review the

colleague of Freud, Theodor Reik (1927/1968), who has discussed the psychological

meaning of a patient’s silence. To Reik, silences during therapy are emotionally

filling the session with words.

from a truly listening frame. Echoing Freud’s evenly hovering attention, the British

analyst Nina Coltart has described her style of work as follows:

<<Bare attention has a sort of purity about it... It’s that you simply become better, as

any good analyst knows, at concentrating more and more directly, more purely, on

what’s going on in a session. You come to concentrate more and more fully on this

person who’s with you here and now, and on what it is they experience with you; to

the point that many sessions become similar to meditations>>. (Coltart, 1998, p. 176)

holds her thought processes in suspension while closely attending to the patient. The

probably what many psychotherapists have been doing for a long time.

   In the rest of the paper, I will discuss a number of publications about evenly hovering

attention and also about mindfulness, and explore the mutual affinities between the

two. While inevitably this will not be an exhaustive review of all the relevant issues, I

hope my exploration would provide useful signposts for the interested reader.

Talking is essential to the practice of psychotherapy, but it is not simply a matter of

being. Bromberg (1994) declares that, in psychoanalysis, speaking is “not simply a

process of delivering content. It is also a relational act that shapes the content of what

time to the partner in conversation: a sense of waiting, respecting the rhythm of what

is unfolding, with a tentativeness that offers space, both temporal and imaginative, for

the emergence of what is important. Speaking does not have to happen continuously

   To be open to novel possibilities in this fully present manner requires a depth of

neglected in healthcare environments where the concept of “managed care” has

become hegemonic. Graybar & Leonard (2005) comment that during difficult

moments in therapy, it is tempting for all therapists, whether experienced and

inexperienced, “to bypass such discomfort by letting go of listening and giving in to

the reflex to speak, advise, or lecture” (p. 14).

   Graybar and Leonard argue that the ubiquity of drug therapies and the popularity of

brief, manualised “empirically-supported treatments” (ESTs) have together subverted

the practice of proper listening in mental healthcare. Although the quality of the

therapeutic relationship (rather than specific therapy techniques or “ingredients”) is

(programmed), cost-effective (cheap), technique-oriented (manualised) treatments for

psychological distress are the only option, in a cultural context where speed and

technology trump everything else. While this trend, which has more to do with

“business” than “care”, is most dominant in the United States, it is clearly gaining

traction in the UK.

   Within the “managed care” model, the kind of psychotherapeutic listening, where the

therapist’s own assumptions are suspended, her attention finely tuned to the patient’s

(unconscious) narrative, and the latter’s (sometimes tortuous) revelation accepted with

openness, where the patient’s experiences count, and where the therapist is not the

“boss” but a fellow-traveller, has often been summarily dismissed as unnecessary

luxury.

To counter the decline of listening in psychotherapy, it would be instructive to go

back to Freud’s recommendation of “impartially suspended attention”, which he sees

   Most therapists, even outside of psychoanalysis, know that free association is the

fundamental rule for the patient in analysis: she has to say whatever comes to mind

without holding back. The other side of the free association coin is evenly hovering

attention, which can be characterised as the analyst’s free association that enables her

gestures, feelings, memories, dreams, questions, tangents, ravings, grimaces,

mumblings, etc from the patient are met with a completely open and accepting

(interpretative) coherence to the patient’s story, takes place when the analyst reflects

on the session (or on the whole analysis) afterwards. In Freud’s own words,

psychoanalytic attention “rejects all aids, even note-taking, and consists simply of not

focusing on anything in particular, but giving everything the same kind of ‘impartially

suspended attention’” (Freud, 1912/2002, p. 33).

   Mark Epstein (1984) comments that such attention is not passive or allowing the mind

to wander, but “to give ‘equal notice’ to every object of awareness for hours at a

time” (p. 195). In his view, “[e]venly suspended attention has received curiously little

attention from the analytic community over the years” (p. 197). But in fact there are a

number of early psychoanalysts who have discussed the concept at length or made

attempt to develop it further. For example, Wilfred Bion (1967), a British

psychoanalyst, has formulated the concept of “without memory and desire” as the

analytic listening frame (see next section), and Theodor Reik (1948) has developed

unconscious processes of the psychoanalyst himself” (Reik, 1948, p. x). However,

Epstein (1984) disagrees with Reik’s “searchlight” metaphor. He comments that this

Freud’s evenly hovering attention. To Epstein, Buddhist meditation is closer to what

Freud has described.

   Another concept, “analytic neutrality” (or the principle of “abstinence”), is also

related to the idea of evenly hovering attention. Psychoanalysts have debated about

whether neutrality is too passive and therefore off-putting to patients. While

cautioning against aloofness, remoteness, blankness and anonymity (likely to be

experienced as persecuting), Greenberg (1986) believes that neutrality is “the ideal

atmosphere within the context of a particular understanding of the analytic process,

hovering attention is an expression of neutrality, and is essential for helping the

analysand achieve self-knowledge. However, Greenberg is aware that the analyst

he acknowledges that the analyst influencing the analytic process is unavoidable, he

acceptable) form of influence.

   While evenly hovering attention is seen as an attitude expressing openness, receptivity

first entry (dated 7 January 1932) contains a strong criticism against the “so-called

free-floating attention, which ultimately amounts to no attention at all, and which is

certainly inadequate to the highly emotional character of the analysand’s

communications, often brought out only with the greatest difficulty” (Ferenczi, 1988, 

p. 1). This was Ferenczi’s veiled attack on Freud himself, implying that the latter was

   Despite Ferenczi’s criticism, it should not be impossible for a therapist to hold on to a

truly receptive listening attitude with sincere and warm engagement with the patient.

Such attention does not have to be a passive attitude that conveys indifference,

distancing or boredom. The important thing is how to cultivate an honest openness

that sustains genuine relating. The work of Peter Lomas (1981, 1994 and 1999) is a

good illustration of sensitive analytic practice.

   Looking from another angle, evenly suspended psychoanalytic listening is based on

what Reik’s has described as “social sense” and “rhythmic sensitivity” which jointly

determine “the right moment to communicate an interpretation” (Arnold, 2006, p.

   The British literary critic James Wood suggests that “novelists and readers must

develop their own third ears” and 

words, attending to patterns, repetitions, echoes, deciding why a metaphor is

successful and another is not, judging how the perfect placement of the right verb

or adjective seals a sentence with mathematical finality>>. (Wood, 2008, p. 137-138,

emphasis added)

   Although Wood is talking about literature, I would suggest that this passage can serve

as an apposite description of Reik’s “third-ear listening” that should underpin

psychotherapeutic practice.

Taking Freud’s evenly hovering attention seriously, Bion (1967) famously talked

about the need to discard memory and desire when starting each and every analytic

session. It is Bion’s belief that “[p]sychoanalytic ‘observation’ is concerned neither

session attended by the psychoanalyst must have no history and no future” (p. 272).

This rule of “without memory and desire” will facilitate the evolution of something

significant out of the “darkness and formlessness” of the session. Bion’s dictum

echoes Freud’s view that “if you follow your expectations, you run the risk of never

finding out anything you do not know already; if you follow your inclinations, then

you are bound to distort whatever you perceive” (Freud, 1912/2002, p. 34).

he said note-taking should not be carried out during the session (presumably it could

be done afterwards); he also cautioned against engaging in “research” or “scientific”

The analyst should proceed as if she has no plan/agenda in mind. But is this really

feasible?

   There are two problems here. Freud’s “scientific research” consists only of his case

studies, and this work represents his theory-building effort. But how are research data

months (if not years) of therapy? If she does write notes after each session, should she

not read them while treatment is ongoing? If the rule is to have no plan (without

memory and desire), perhaps the analyst should not write any notes until after the

arrived at a conclusion or formulation about the patient’s problem. As Freud has

written up his cases in a way that conforms to his ideas, they are “data” that would

inevitably confirm his beliefs. Thus his “research” involves a circularity that is not a

rigorous testing of his theory.

them, is it possible to stop hypotheses from forming in her mind during sessions? Is

“without memory and desire” humanly possible? If psychoanalysis has made any

contribution to human understanding, it is its focus on the unconscious aspect of

unconscious has not led her in a particular (perhaps erroneous) direction if she does

consult her (subjective) notes before a session.

   It is important to say here that Bion’s stipulation of without memory and desire, like

more to do with the analyst’s “complete availability and openness to the patient”

(Hooke, n.d., p. 7) rather than abdicating her responsibility to hold things in mind

(i.e., to remember).

   Both Freud and Bion have remarked that their respective recommendation is distilled

from extensive practice. But as Hooke has pointed out, “what happens in the

consulting room and what is theorized and gets written is often different” (Hooke,

n.d., p. 7). Indeed, reading Freud’s cases does not always give the impression of him

showing neutrality, openness and receptivity; rather, he always resolutely brings his

honestly tackle the risk of her preconceived ideas influencing therapy negatively. In

While acknowledging the importance of Freud’s recommendation, Robert Hobson

(1985), a British psychotherapist from the Jungian tradition, has highlighted the

borrowed from the poet John Keats, which signifies the capacity to stay with

uncertainties, mysteries and doubts without any “irritable reaching for fact or reason”.

It is plausible to suggest that such openness is the prerequisite for genuine evenly

hovering attention. Negative capability is also what Bion has recommended, not only

Symington, 1996, p. 169).

   However, negative capability does not mean not working hard. The active nature of

evenly hovering attention is clarified in Hobson’s (1985) description of how the

therapist’s attention should be receptive of the “minute particulars” that emerge in the

session. Hobson has developed the concept of “aloneness-togetherness” which

characterises the clinical encounter as one where the therapist is alone within her own

   In a recent article in the British Psychoanalytic Council newsletter, Kernberg (2014)

has sounded a warning:

<<There is a naïve assumption that the analyst listening with evenly suspended

attention, or with an effort to enter each session ‘without memory or desire’, open

to reverie on the patient’s material, will provide the essential and exclusive

precondition on which psychoanalytic understanding and interpretation are based. I

believe that this assumption is a bias derived from a lack of understanding of what a

clear and precise technical approach means>>. (Kernberg, 2014, p. 11)

   What Kernberg is saying here is that maintaining an evenly hovering attention is

necessary but not sufficient; there is a need to develop a more sophisticated

framework to consider is Patrick Casement’s idea of the “internal supervisor” (see,

e.g., Casement, 1985), which has the potential of being adopted by, and adapted for, a

Freud has used the metaphor of the analyst as a telephone receiver to describe

impartially suspended attention (Freud, 1912/2002, p. 37). This has been criticised by

a number of analysts. For example, Filip Geerardyn (2002) has pointed out that

telephony involves the encoding of an already fixed message, which is then

electrically transmitted, and finally decoded by the telephone receiver according to a

set of predetermined parameters, whereas in analysis meaning is fluid, not pre-fixed,

but emerges in the context of communication, and more than likely emerging

passive, and has stated that “psychoanalytic listening involves acts of sensibility,

inside the analysand’s psyche, but as being constantly created, intersubjectively,

within the flux of the transference-countertransference matrix. He believes that

analysts tend to resort to “content-driven theoretical models” or “impoverished

fictions” in times of clinical impasse or confusion, which lead to reductive

interpretations. Griffin suggests that analysts should learn from good literature,

particularly the novel, where close reading of the “dimensional universes of human

   The views propounded by Griffin and Geerardyn are more in tune with respect for the

of sensibility, engagement and imagination”, it is relevant to consider what the

Jungian analyst Barry Proner has said in his aptly titled essay “A word about words”.

Proner (2006) presents a view that the active task of evenly hovering attention has to

can be both symbolic and concrete at the same time” (Proner, 2006, p.432). He

believes that patients are looking for words to anchor experiences that are often

that is not yet mentally represented” (p. 430). This is how Griffin has characterised

<<When I am working well and I am in what Freud called ‘evenly hovering attention’

and Bion called ‘reverie’, I can listen most deeply and unconscious meanings are

have no more than ordinary or trivial significance>>. (Griffin, 2016, p. 426, emphasis

added)

   In this context, it is puzzling to find theorists who have interpreted Freud’s or Bion’s

recommendation in rather mystifying ways. For example, the Lacanian analyst Bruce

Fink (2007) remarks that evenly hovering attention is “to hear without

understanding”, without doing anything or imposing any meaning to the “ribbon of

sound” produced by the patient (p. 12 and p. 21). One wonders how therapy could

the least.

   However, there is one thing I would debate with Griffin. In his paper, he has alluded

to the importance of finding the “right word”. I am not sure if it is possible, or

always to be tentative: the “right word” might be right one moment, but “not-right”

the next. The certainty one achieves today may easily be overturned by what happens

tomorrow. Transience or impermanence is a fact of existence. This is the Buddhist

insight that psychoanalysis should learn from.

In its origin, Buddhism was a philosophy of life rather than a religion. As Safran

(2003b) has pointed out, metaphysical and cosmological speculations are irrelevant to

Buddhist philosophy. It is not an ontological theory; its aim is to relieve human

suffering. The Buddhist idea of impermanence (emptiness or nothingness) is about

seeing through the transience and changeability of life, not a metaphysical declaration

Existence as such is phenomenologically accepted, and the task is to “get on with it”.

In this sense, Buddhism does not reject a realist model of the world. Buddhist ethics

has to do with accumulating “virtuous conduct”, which entails actions (of goodness)

in the real, physical world. This forms the basis for moral virtues such as compassion,

which many contemporary psychotherapists have espoused in their practice,

particularly those influenced by Buddhism.

   The Buddhist idea of learning to see through the impermanence of all that exists is an

interpretations that is important, it is their usefulness (or otherwise) in helping the

“scientific” one as narrowly conceived. In German (Freud’s working language), the

far from the mechanistic, laboratory connotations that the word conjures up in many

people’s mind in the English-speaking world. An ethical practice has to be based on

is incomplete, approximate, tentative or even defective. It is in this wider context of

“science” that psychoanalysis might converge with Buddhism.

Quoting the well-know declaration of Harvard psychotherapist Jack Engler, the

can be nobody” (p. 128). This is one way of resolving the paradox of “no-self-ness”.

Even though the world is concretely there and suffering is real, we can, and have to,

transcending suffering. To be “somebody but also nobody” does not remove the

not trapped in any ontological maze. I believe it is Zen that would most benefit the

   Most readers know that mindfulness practice is a discipline of staying with the

present, dwelling in silence, and paying attention to all that there is with curiosity and

an open and non-judgemental attitude. The rhythm of breathing is used as an anchor

accepting (even of the practitioner’s own wandering mind) is all that is required. This

description, though cursory, already suggests an affinity between mindfulness and

Freud’s evenly hovering attention or Bion’s no-memory-no-desire reverie.

   Like psychoanalysts, mindfulness practitioners place great emphasis on the idea of

neutrality, albeit with a different nuance. In meditation, being neutral and detached

means the practice is not about success or failure, or striving to achieve anything, but

simply staying with a moment-by-moment awareness. There is no duality of body and

mind (e.g., the physical practice of archery is also a practice of the mind); and no

   There are many questions about mindfulness practice still being debated. Is it possible

How can this paradox be resolved? Is it possible to achieve a completely

uncluttered mind? Can we ever suspend judgement totally, or is it not the case that

being conscious means making judgement (moral or otherwise) all the time? These

questions can also be directed at the psychoanalytic idea of no-memory-no-desire or

evenly hovering attention. They reflect a commonality between the two.

   Furthermore, there is a paradox about the non-striving attitude of mindfulness: if we

mindfulness a language-based practice? Think of what mindfulness teachers are doing

attention of the practitioners. Would these words trap the mind, thus negating the idea

of emptying the mind? These questions are not raised to reject mindfulness, but to

widen the horizon for exploration.

As the Bodhidharma has said, “Many roads lead to the Path, but basically there are

only two: reason and practice” (Bodhidharma, 1987, p. 3). Both reason and practice

of body and mind that prevent evil from arising in either. And to invoke means to call

to mind, to call constantly to mind the rules of discipline and to follow them with all

your might” (Bodhidharma, 1987, p. 111). On this basis, it is not unreasonable to say

that mindfulness does involve subjectivity (the phenomenal experience of the “I”) in

the context of striving in a particular direction (“invoking rules of discipline”).

   What mindfulness can learn from psychoanalysis is the acknowledgement of the

The significance of the unconscious dimension of human experience cannot be

mindful attentiveness is never an act always under the conscious control of the person.

Such understanding may help to alleviate a practitioner’s sense of failure of not

achieving complete blankness of the mind. More importantly, such acknowledgement

may also help the mindfulness community learn to tackle some of the meditationrelated

(sometimes severe) psychic or emotional difficulties that practitioners might

encounter.

   The interest psychoanalysts have shown toward Buddhism or meditation is not new.

There is a considerable literature which this paper will not have space to address,

ranging from Carl Jung’s or Erich Fromm’s well-known texts (Jung, 1978; Suzuki,

Fromm & de Martino, 1960), to more recent studies by various analysts (e.g.,

Falkenström, 2003; Leone, 1995; Lin & Seiden, 2014; Mace, 2008; Makise, 2017;

Moncayo, 2012; Safran, 2003a; Suler, 1995; Young-Eisendrath & Muramoto 2002).

Some of these works are not particularly helpful, such as Makise (2017) or Moncayo

(2012), with inaccessible theoretical baggage couched in esoteric (Lacanian)

language.

   In the cognitive-behaviour therapy tradition (CBT), mindfulness has also had great

Compassion-Focussed Therapy (e.g., Gilbert, 2009), Dialectical Behaviour Therapy

(e.g., Linehan, 1993), or Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (e.g., Hayes, 2002;

Hayes et al., 2006). Of course mindfulness has attracted other therapists as well,

including the somatic or body-oriented psychotherapies (e.g., Weiss, 2009) and

Emotion-Focused Therapy (Geller & Greenberg, 2012).

psychotherapy would be an appropriate place for mindfulness? Is cognitive-behavior

therapy (CBT) really the most suitable area within which to locate a mindfulness-oriented

phenomenological psychotherapy. He says, “one cannot think of many more suitable

adjectives to add to mindfulness than existential, and it is certainly more appropriate

the risk of turning mindfulness into a specific brand rather than acknowledging it as

the fundamental attitude (or way of being) that all psychotherapists should cultivate.

One area of discussion, in terms of the rapprochement between psychoanalysis and

mindfulness, is the question of what the “self” is and how Buddhism and

psychoanalysis converge or diverge in this respect (see, e.g., Falkenström, 2003 or

Sular, 1995). Usually the attempt is to postulate various structures of the self (core

self, self-structure, selfobject, the observing self, etc), and compare and contrast how

Buddhist ideas and psychoanalytic theories might come together in this respect.

   However, such discussion often gets lost in a theoretical labyrinth that is not helpful

to practitioners. Falkenström’s (2003) attempt to resolve the contradiction between

the psychoanalytic concept of self and the Buddhist idea of “no-self-ness” fails

experience. To me, the “self” is a way of speaking about the experiencing of

the self-system, etc) reifies the dynamic, phenomenal experiencing of being a

(material) subject.

   Theorising about the self as a system of mental representations, like what Falkenström

has done, does not chime with the Buddhist sense of “no-self-ness”, which is pointing

to the ineffable, non-structural nature of subjectivity. While Falkenström has

expressed doubt about the concept of the “self”, he still gets muddled in trying to

explain his idea. Just take one of his propositions: “When the individual has identified

with part of experience as ‘self’, there will inevitably be threats to this self…”

(Falkenström, 2003, p. 9). One wonders who (or what) the “individual” is, and

appears later on in the sentence. Or perhaps Falkenström is saying that “experience”

constitutes (becomes) the self which the individual then identifies with? But does this

dualism make sense?

Many psychoanalysts are more concerned about the therapeutic aspects of

mindfulness than theories about the self. Kathleen Speeth (1982) discusses the

importance for the psychotherapist to maintain both focused and panoramic attention

“in both direction” (i.e., to herself and to the other person), and refers to meditation

techniques of various Eastern traditions, including Zen practice. In her view, Freud’s

evenly hovering attention represents panoramic attention, which resonates with

meta-level observation essential for keeping a detached view of the therapeutic

process.

While many therapists have espoused mindfulness practice as therapy tool, some go

widely respected Canadian-born but New York-based psychoanalyst was one of

Safran’s commitment to Buddhism:

<<[T]he book is permeated by Safran’s Buddhist background. He discusses the

tension between the meliorist American dream of unlimited possibility of psychic

change and unbounded optimism, with Freud’s rational pessimism and stoicism.

From a Buddhist perspective, the paradox is that the more one can come to accept

oneself and the world as it is, the more one is in a position to change both>>. (Holmes,

2013, p. 103)

   Pessimism and stoicism are seen here as conducive to the development of resilience,

and this echoes what Lin & Seiden (2014) say about psychoanalysis and Buddhist

it” (p. 4). That is, both perspectives are regarded as being honest in their acceptance of

the reality of suffering in the world. The Buddhist practice of “no-self-ness” is what

analysts like Safran believe to be an effective means for coping with inevitable

suffering. This is not a denial of existence, but a way of grasping its transience. As

van Waning (2002) has said: “The Buddha did not say, ‘You don’t exist,’ but rather,

‘You have no self.’ His point was not to deny or reject the self, but to recognize the

93)

   To embrace the paradox of transience, it would be incumbent on us to acknowledge

Safran:

   In Buddhist constructivism, the primary thrust is to cultivate a radical sense of

openness. The belief is that concepts enslave us and that the tendency toward

reification creates suffering. The emphasis is not on constructing adaptive

narratives but rather on the radical deconstruction of all narratives. It is interesting

to note that this emphasis on radical openness is similar in some respects to the

growing awareness in analytic thinking of the importance of the analyst’s openness

and tolerance of ambiguity. (Safran, 2003b, p. 22)

Within the Buddhist perspective, craving is the source of suffering as it leads to

illusions. What psychoanalysts can learn from Buddhism or mindfulness practice is,

as Safran has suggested, to give up such craving and embrace radical openness.

Letting go of concepts that shackle intelligence, theories that diminish horizon and

fixed self-identifies that restrict imagination may yet provide psychoanalysis with an

psychoanalysis in a mindfulness frame.

It is not uncommon to find inexperienced therapists confusing mindfulness with

tradition, originally with a specific focus on working with people struggling with

borderline personality difficulties. Anthony Bateman and Peter Fonagy (2004, 2006),

two London-based psychoanalytically trained psychotherapists, have pioneered this

therapy should be like. Sadly, like much else in the psychotherapy world,

mentalisation has now become packaged and widely advertised in the therapy

“market-place”.

   This is not an appropriate place to go into a lengthy exposition of the mentalisation

perspective; suffice it to say it is a therapeutic framework based on the concept of

“mind-mindedness”. Or, to put it simply, it is a style of working that constantly

on understanding the thinking, reasoning or feeling of the patient, but most

so that the latter can gradually learn to grasp the mind of others (hence “mindmindedness”).

   Thus mentalisation is about “keeping mind in mind” (own mind and others’ minds),

not making up the mind too quickly (keeping an open mind or “not knowing” stance),

own mind and in the minds of other people. To be able to mentalise is to be able to

use language effectively: to move from the concrete (language as literal

representation) to the symbolic (language as metaphorical), thus moving from

about a problem) rather than act blindly (e.g., hitting out to solve a dispute).

have roots in the analytic tradition. The capacity for mentalising is likely to help

sustain an analyst’s evenly hovering attention.

   Inspired by the seminal work of Hans Loewald (1960), Jonathan Lear (2003) has

positivist, reductionistic, “the world is what it is” realism that places unquestioning

faith on quantitative measurements. Rather, he talks about the “subjective sense of

objectivity” (Lear, 2003, p. 49) which entails a recognition that the world is made up

(although they seem like “objects” out there). Such acknowledgement of

intersubjectivity constitutes true objectivity, as Lear understands it. To me, the idea of

the “subjective sense of objectivity” is another way of describing a person’s capacity

for mentalisation.

indispensable to both; and both are respectful of and curious about the mind.

Falkenström (2012) has made an attempt to bring mindfulness, mentalisation and

subjective grasp of phenomenal experiencing as central to both mindfulness and

mentalisation (despite the paradoxical Buddhist idea of “no-self-ness”).

While acknowledging the differences between mentalisation and mindfulness, Chris

Mace (2008) has commented on the advantage of bringing them together:

<<[M]entalization, a capacity that enhances what Fonagy has termed ‘reflective self

function’ through an articulated appreciation of minds (our own and those of

others) as the locus of personal history, affect, thought and action, is quite

orthogonal to the pre-reflective capacity that is mindful awareness. In practice,

development of the two functions can be therapeutically synergistic>> (p. 126).

The idea of synergy suggested by Mace points to the possibility of alliance that would

benefit both. However, it is important to bear in mind that mindfulness and

mentalisation are not so much theory as practice. Any theorising of either must be a

where the process, rather than content, is the focus.

Psychoanalysis, mindfulness and mentalisation share the commonality of openness

towards the phenomenal experience of subjectivity (the “I” experience). At its best,

such openness signifies an honest seeking of understanding of subjectivity,

notwithstanding the fact that full understanding is impossible. In this regard, the

practice of subjectivity could be profitably explored in terms of the concept of

   Witness a mindfulness teacher in action: he shows the earnestness of an evangelical

preacher, with beguiling intonation, inflection of voice, and subtle or not so subtle

participants to follow the meditative exercise. Knowingly or unknowingly, he is

shut.

   Nowadays, most therapists are keen to point out that they have embraced mindfulness

not as religion (Buddhism), but as a mental discipline beneficial to therapy work.

Nevertheless, there is often a touch of liturgy in the gatherings of mindfulness

practitioners, such as beginning and ending with group meditative practice, not

dissimilar to prayers in a religious meeting, even if the mindfulness event is a research

within the “mindfulness community”.

   While performativity is a modern concept, the phenomenon it seeks to describe is not

new. The performative has always been an important element of the cultural history of

the human species, most noticeably in religious practices and the dramatic art. In the

According to Fischer-Lichte (2004/2008), one major aspect of the performative can be

(“materializing of possibilities”) and independence from pre-existing categories or

essence (the “non-referential” nature of performative acts). As such, the performative

is “of crucial importance in constituting bodily as well as social identity” (Fischer-

Lichte, 2004/2008, p. 27). Religious rituals or liturgies are performative in that they

performed publicly or in private. In both situations, it is constitutive of the identity of

the practitioner(s).

analyst can be seen as part and parcel of a performative set-up. Freud has indicated

that he “cannot bear to be stared at for eight hours a day or longer” (Freud,

1913/2002, p. 55) and has laid down a rule about the analyst sitting behind the patient

justified. Such a seating arrangement resembles the director sitting behind the camera,

controlling the performance of the actors and film crew.

   It is possible to view free association as the performance the analysand has to deliver:

a creative and improvised act, through which a narrative, even if incoherent, emerges.

However, no matter how “free” the patient’s associations seem to be, they are of

necessity contextual, motivated, sometimes rhetorical, always for a purpose, with or

without the patient’s awareness. It is often the case that patients conform to the

analyst’s theory when “performing” free association, as if following the analyst’s

(invisible) script. This is not to say the patient’s account is fictitious. Its

performativity resides in the quasi-liturgical function it fulfils, whether seen as

Catholic confessional or other forms of religious/dramatic catharsis. This

performativity is crucial in constituting the analysand within the analytic frame.

To think about psychoanalysis and mindfulness as performative does not detract from

their therapeutic possibilities. Rituals, religious or otherwise, are essential for the re-

enchantment of subjectivity (the “I” experience) and of the world, as they are

generative of meanings and identities. Rituals can be curative, even if their truth-value

is impossible to ascertain.

If performativity constitutes identity, there is no doubt that Freud’s status as the

infallible Founding Father of psychoanalysis is underpinned by his performative act.

“Long experience had taught me, as it might anyone else…” (Freud, 2002, p. 3);

“Experience tells us…” (p. 24); “Analysis has shown…” (p. 26); “Experience has

waving of the hand confirming the truth of what he is going to say. His way of talking

(and writing) undergirds the truth of his ideas, the basis of which lies in what he

himself has done and experienced. His performative act is declarative. It is the

performativity of Freud’s work that has generated the whole edifice of

psychoanalysis.

   In the words of Adam Phillips:

<<Freud was always puzzled about what he was writing about when he was writing

fair in describing the obscurity and the derangement of what he calls the

even guidelines about the actual practice of psychoanalysis (and his case histories

or imitable experiments)>>. (Phillips, 2002, p. x, emphasis added)

   It is the story-telling nature of Freud’s work that is so interesting, particularly from

the vantage point of performativity, even though, as Phillips has pointed out in the

above passage, Freud’s performative act sometimes reflects his own contradiction. Of

cases always develop in such a way as to confirm his theories, even if the therapy

itself fails to cure the patient.

   Adam Phillips has suggested that: “If Freud had died, at the age of forty-nine, having

would have been sufficiently complete” (Phillips 2014, p. 145). He does not think

Freud’s later work (structural theory of the mind, concept of death drive, or writings

“early Freud” is risk-taking, speculative, bold and more open to possibilities, whereas

senses of the word). If he had died in 1905/1906, there might not be a psychoanalytic

empire or a founding deity. To me, the “mature” Freud has taken on a different

performativity, one which has restricted the horizon of psychoanalysis. In this context,

it is plausible to suggest that both the performative and the improvisational could, if

practised with an open mind, extend the horizon and bring the imaginative to bear on

the ordinary, thus generating realms of meanings hitherto unexplored.

<<We have seen how both Buddhism and psychoanalysis have struggled over time

with the tension between the poles of agnosticism or atheism versus faith and

commitment. Within psychoanalysis the tendency to deify Freud and to treat his

words as gospel can be seen as another form of the return of the repressed>>. (Safran,

2003b, p. 21)

According to Jonathan Lear, the commitment to becoming a psychoanalyst is a

foundational performative act:

one-off exercise limited in scope and in time; instead, it should permeate the whole of

the analyst’s life. As Lear sees it, however, to be a psychoanalyst is not a matter of

specific project of being/becoming a person, and thus a life-long moral practice.

Similarly, Bion has suggested that negative capability should become a way of life for

the analyst, and mindfulness teachers always say, unequivocally, that meditation is

not a therapy technique but an indwelling in a particular form of being. Here, no

doubt, is where psychoanalysis and mindfulness converge.

Words and silence are both essential to psychotherapy, as they embody the

performative in the intersubjective world of the therapeutic space. As Cox and

Theilgaard (1987) have said, psychotherapy is concerned with “the significance of the

How a psychotherapist manages to balance between silences and words is a

continuing learning process. While bearing in mind all the caveats discussed in this

essay, it is perhaps not unreasonable to say that “evenly suspended attention”, within

mindfulness stance with a deep awareness of the unconscious dimension of

A human story “performed” within therapeutic space always starts from an arbitrary

point in time. The story often goes round in circles and criss-crosses different worlds

in a zigzagging, meandering way, getting entangled with seemingly irrelevant details

and detours, sometimes in a direction that may surprise one or both participants.

There is a lot of to-ing and fro-ing, of mixing and blending, of veering on a tangent,

tidy, but full of random and messy bits and pieces, repetitions, diversions and cul-desacs.

   Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury, was in New York on 11th

September 2001, a few streets away from the World Trade Centre. He was in a church

meeting when the world was shattered by the unimaginably brutal terrorist acts

perpetrated on the twin towers. In 2002, he published a pamphlet, just over 80 pocketsized

pages long, of his reflections on the cataclysmic event of 9/11. In this piece of

writing, Williams talks about his experience of an “empty space”:

<<In that time, there is no possibility of thinking, of explanations, of resolutions. I

can’t remember much sense of panic, much feeling about the agony going on a

couple of hundred yards away, let alone much desire for justice or vengeance. It

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