Some reflections on curiosity and psychoanalytic technique

Freud's 1913 recommendation that the psychoanalyst listen with free-floating attention has continued to guide psychoanalytic thinking and teaching about the optimal attitude the analyst maintains while listening to the analysand. The author attempts to develop more explicitly the concept of intentionality in the psychoanalyst's listening, a factor which has heretofore been insufficiently recognized. This is demonstrated by a clinical examination of the alterations in the level of curiosity in both the analyst and the analysand, with curiosity in its relatively conflict-free form being conceptualized herein as an attitude of the ego.