ABSTRACT
In Recommendations to Physicians Practising Psychoanalysis (1912e), Freud first introduces the term “evenly suspended attention”, in the course of an open discussion of what we would now call the mental attitude of the analyst. For some time I have felt curious about the connections between Freud’s ideas on this subject and those of Bion, not least because the idea is reinforced more and more in my mind that Bion was in fact very close to Freud’s thought, much more than appears at first glance. The enterprise of translating the first volume of A Memoir of the Future had as its corollary a sort of “treasure hunt” in search of the roots not only of quotations or word-plays with which the text is scattered, but also about the origins of the psychoanalytic concepts used by Bion: and this search brought me closer and closer to Freudian sources.
