Narrating, Attending, and Empathizing

An introduction briefly reviews the author's efforts to rework psychoanalytic conceptualization away from mechanistic entities, forces, energies, and structure and toward action and narration, both broadly conceived. Then, examining the actions of attending and empathizing in the clinical psychoanalytic situation the author argues that it is not possible to treat attending and empathizing as independent variables: a clear differentiation of the two is precluded by the multiplicity and complexity of cues constantly flowing between analyst and analysand, inevitably selective choices and weighted judgments, and consequently the extent to which reference to each variable implies the other. A brief discussion follows emphasizing the play of power and affiliative tendencies in the adoption of, and adherence to the selective principles implied in narrative preferences. The essay concludes with an example of controversy between two schools of psychoanalytic thought, each with its own, though overlapping, preferred metanarratives concerning the best focus for attending-empathizing.