Curb your distraction

Curb Your Distraction The vicissitudes of distraction, as both a major manic defence and as a spur to integrative unconscious, exploratory linking “I conquered my depression with the aid of a special diet of intellectual matters and now, thanks to the distraction, it is slowly healing.” S Freud (letter to friend.) “Distraction is the only thing that consoles us for our miseries, and yet is itself the greatest of our miseries For it is this (distraction) which principally hinders us from reflecting upon ourselves, and which makes us insensibly ruin ourselves, (but) without this we should be in a state of weariness, and this weariness would spur us to seek a more solid means of escaping from it But diversion amuses us, and leads us unconsciously to death.” Blaise Pascal (1656), Pensées, 164-165 Such is the contagiousness of distraction that it is difficult to discuss without experiencing a blend of the ultra-serious with the seemingly facetious humour of the trivial This uneasy humour is expressed exquisitely through our laughing but groaning reaction to Tony Blair’s ridiculously revealing slip – “weapons of mass distraction”- made as the then British prime minister was trying to rationalise an unjustifiably destructive war involvement, to an increasingly sceptical world So, the idea of distraction as a blatant avoidance of painful or humiliating political truths, is hardly unknown to most people We even have an apparent virtuoso of this technique currently tweeting his art out, from the White House But a wonderfully lucid example of the intermingling of distraction and projective reaction formation can be found closer to home, with an ex Victorian premier, (and now a supposedly virtuosic football manager and nationwide curer of depression) Jeff Kennett Several years ago, he vociferously championed the cause of the Greek government in goading the British government to return the Elgin Marbles to Athens It was then discovered that he himself had permanently “borrowed” a work of art from the Victorian parliament – a portrait of his father figure, a long-previous premier named Bolte And the internet is full of such gems as: “10 Ways to Defeat Distraction” Of which, my personal favourite is the suggestion that we “… seek out all distracting sites on the internet and block them.” (!) Well, good luck with that There are also prayers asking for deliverance from distraction in worshipping God, and so forth For example, an American pastor/counsellor writes: “Our fundamental and most dangerous problem in distraction is in being distracted from God — our tendency to shift our attention orientation from the greatest Object in existence to countless lesser ones The Bible calls this idolatry This fundamental attention shift disorders us in pervasive ways We find our tendency to be distracted from the more important to the less important cascading down, detrimentally affecting our relationships and responsibilities So, at the deepest level, we are distractible because of our fallen, selfish nature; we have evil inside us.” But, he then, with a somewhat kinder-toned superego, suggests that: “Our attention often runs to what’s important to us So distraction can reveal what we love.” I will amplify this apparent two-faced nature of the workings of distraction in, and on, the mind - but there has been surprisingly little attention paid to distraction in the psychoanalytic literature, and it is not usually included in our clinician’s “checklist” of manic defences, alongside the usual triumvirate of denial, triumph and contempt In this paper I will argue for its inclusion as a manic (or manic-obsessive) defence of significant importance in the disruption of depressive, whole-object (Klein, Bion, Meltzer, Rosenfeld) thinking, including the capacity for mourning and reparation However, I also hope to show that there is another side, or vertex, in which the defence of distraction may have a life-protecting, and even creative capability, if it is not too cursorily condemned, or dismissed as merely destructive, or always only serving the manicdestructive cause And, as clinicians – with a supposedly free-floating, evenly suspended Freud-Bion-Sherlock reverie-inducing state of mind, we are deliberately focusing our attention away from the specific, to the broader canvas – to hear the unexpected pattern, or theme or ringing of far off bells in our counter-transferential minds Which of us have not found it useful, even essential, at times to turn away from the detailed content of what a patient is thrusting at us, in order to hear the tone of voice in which it is offered? Is it rushed and manic? Laboured and painful? – Strained, like a difficult birth? Or, stilted and inhibited – suggesting great fear and anxiety? As we listen, we must, somehow- know when to change the “gears of our attention”without too quickly labelling this as always a purely destructive distraction of mind Keeping in mind my suggestion that distraction may be seen as Janus-faced - both as seriously effective manic defence, but also at times as a helpful guiding light from the unconscious towards what is truly important - I will proffer a brief excerpt from that unnerving social observation comedy Curb Your Enthusiasm which, in its concision, may serve to illustrate this under-explored manic defence of distraction (Of course, it would be better to watch this clip in real time – to get the admixture of comedy and seriousness, and their intermingling rhythm.) The anti hero Larry David - a “schlemiel” – (defined by the OED s an awkward, stupidlyobsessive and “unlucky” person, shaking his fists at the world) is in a therapy session and has just recalled a dream where he is proffered 72 virgins – but, in his typically obsessive way, he counts them and can only see 71 This stops him from enjoying any of the virgins, as he meticulously counts them, again and again and again Then, just as the therapist tries to engage him on this very point, Larry suddenly and urgently states that he cannot abide the perceived difference in comfort between the therapist’s chair and his own - the patients’ This, on the one hand, is used as a distraction from taking in and thinking about anything that the therapist confronts him with – but, on the other hand, it may be understood as a creatively unconscious deepening of, and association to, the very issue that the by now exasperated (pseudo)therapist is trying to focus on I see this as an interesting apparent paradox about the workings of distraction, and its differing conscious and unconscious manifestations In this particular fictitious example the therapist, (interestingly, yet also a distraction, the therapist is played by the same actor whose very fine line of moral corruption is exposed in the series Breaking Bad) is way out of his depth – seemingly having no knowledge of, or expertise with, the concepts of transference-countertransference, and their unconscious referencing of the here-and-now patient-therapist relationship But, nonetheless, for illustrative purposes only, I will use this unlikely, but concise example from a faux consulting room in order to discuss distraction as not only an important manic defence which may also play a crucial role in obsessional states of mind (or mindlessness) The abrupt shift of the topic to the patient’s sense of injustice and envy re the comfort of the chairs could be an unconscious attempt to deepen the thinking about the apparently oedipal self-castration – possibly from Oedipal father rivalry to primal envy of the maternal internal object In fact, before Melanie Klein’s model of psychic “positions” was dovetailed into the typology of paranoid-schizoid and depressive, she had included “manic-obsessive” as a midpoint position – before full depressive guilt could be tolerated and thought about by the infant mind But I also want to make a plea for tolerating the actual content of the seeming distraction, as potentially a pointer to further understanding of the unconscious reasons for the distraction As I suggested above, although the Larry David example makes clear the need to retreat from thinking about an obsessive oedipal rivalry, (needing to have every woman for himself before he can enjoy even one) it also simultaneously illustrates, , the opportunity for an unconscious deepening of the source of the obsessional anxiety His immediately distracting focus on the differences in comfort of the chairs probably reveals an envy of the primal object’s breast-chair, leading to an attack on the worth of what the therapist offers and a sense of begrudging unfairness in the world Of course in real life we all dip in and out of distracted states – for better and for worse (In fact, a few colleagues that knew I was working on this paper half-joked about offering examples from their own personal lives.) Indeed, a chronic inability to stay in touch with, to concentrate, and to reflect upon one’s more difficult, complex and painful feelings may seriously impair one’s capacity to work through life’s immense frustrations, disappointments and grief – and to emotionally develop and grow through the use of thinking to modify one’s frustrations, or to avoid endlessly repeating them Some clinical examples will further illustrate these issues, where (as with the Larry David vignette) some patients always seem to be focusing on the “wrong” things, in order to avoid thinking through her seemingly most important issues – but where staying focused on those issues would invoke the experience of depressive pain, such as guilt, loss and regret I have already briefly alluded to some political uses of distraction as a “convenient” manic defence against a terrifying, punitive superego The changing conception of Manic Defences But, first, some background on the way manic defensiveness has been construed theoretically over the last century Freud in his paper 'On narcissism' (1914), introducing the concept of ego ideal, discussed the relationship between 'ideal ego' and the 'actual ego', i.e one in which 'ego is measured and secured by one's ego ideal' (p 93) and that we all need fairly constant distraction away from the pain of our falling short of the demands of this ideal Karen Horney made much of this ongoing failure to actualize our ideal selves, and like Freud, thought that we may spend years distracting ourselves away from this pain – which may carry the emotional meaning of castration in psychic reality She felt that liberation from the demands of our (often grandiose and unachievable) ideal selves could free us to accept, and to love, our real self and that of others Hinshelwood has attributed the notion of manic defenses to Melanie Klein, as an extension of Freud's thoughts on mania “ By adopting a triumphantly scornful attitude toward psychic reality the patient uses this kind of defense to avoid the depression associated with the conviction of having destroyed a (good) internal object In "Mourning and Melancholia'' (1916-17g [1915]), Freud wrote: "In mania, the ego must have got over the loss of the object (or its mourning over the loss, or perhaps the object itself) The manic subject plainly demonstrates his liberation from the object which was the cause of his suffering" (p 255) Karl Abraham elaborated on Freud's view by attributing manic triumphalism to a liberation from the impossible perfectionistic demands of the ego ideal In the context of her theories on the depressive position, Melanie Klein (1940) emphasized the importance of manic defenses for mental life, and enriched the Freudian conception of mania by adding the idea of the subject's feelings of guilt concerning the disappearance and destruction of the object The manic subject tends to downplay the power of the object, to disdain it, while at the same time maintaining maximum control over objects Manic defenses are typified by three feelings, namely control, triumph, and contempt.” (Hinshelwood,1997 P.212.) In her later work (1957) Klein also made it clear that these manic defences were also of major importance in alleviating the awareness and pain of (unconscious) envy toward the primal good internal object But importantly, Anne Alvarez, (1992) with particular attention to psychotherapy with autistic patients, has stressed the “healthy necessity” and liveliness of that which may first appear as a manic retreat from psychic reality – that it is crucial not to throw out the bathwater of nascent development, and genuine joy, with the gurgling baby’s need to protect itself against the overwhelming shock of an “uncompliant” mother and her strangely indifferent World Indeed, I would go further, and propose that distraction can be an essential ingredient of the creative process – in that, when the conscious contribution is exhausted it may be enormously recharging, and essential, to invigorate the process with contributions from the unconscious mind – something that Jung referred to as the working of the overarching Self, and which Freud only hinted at through his concept of sublimation as an integrative wellspring of frustrated instinct re-sculpted through the work of mourning in civilizing creativity I am suggesting that to “distract” oneself – say with a walk, or an inane television program, or some music – one may often allow the unconscious aspects of creation to bring in more subtle connections and links with work that has seemingly halted – what we often call “writer’s block” Far from being an actual block, I believe that this is actually a nodal point, where the creative self is asking to be immersed in unconscious inspiration – where the internal coupling is forging new linkages, beyond mere consciousness and linear, sensible thinking This is the “stuff” on which dream thoughts are liberated and allowed to merge with, and to infuse, the stuff of ego-logical thinking, with all its causal confinement and paucity of symbolic (Bion calls it alpha) enrichment of imagination But, the impatient infant super-ego may be quick to call this gestation time a manic evasion, and suffuse the reverie time with meaningless guilt or accusations of irresponsibility Similarly, before Jung, and later also Paula Heimann, counter-transference was considered to be a distracting impediment to the analytic process rather than an extra lantern in the dark cavern of unfamiliar transferential emotional fields with which to see previously occluded possibilities, often beyond words “Heimann conveys the notion that unconscious transmission in analysis is a two-way street and that the analyst’s countertransference should be reconceptualized as a source of knowledge rather than as a mere hindrance to the analytic process.” Rolnik Jama (2008) with thanks to P.Maxwell Before Melanie Klein simplified her conceptual framework around the paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions (1935) in her Contribution to the psycho-genesis of manic-depressive states she had initially proposed a manic-obsessional position In such a state of mind, there is some awareness of guilt about the damage to one’s good internal objects, but as yet an inadequate maturity in bringing to bear one’s reparative capabilities Thus, the guilt is experienced more as a persecution, or accusation, rather than anything helpful in mobilizing one’s love and concern for the welfare of the loved figures Therefore, the child is tormented by guilt, and so has to project blame and responsibility outward into external objects rapidly, or else risk becoming paranoid and psychically overwhelmed with the terror of retaliatory punishment These days we would call this feeling persecuted by guilt, which often leads to a superficial form of reparation, referred to as manic reparation, or mock reparation Freud thought that guilt about one’s ambivalently loved objects could (eventually)be channelled healthily into sublimation – which he also saw as the creative foundation of civilization, and an expression of Eros in the wider family of humanity Sublimation brings about an emotional transformation (Bion, 1966) through symbolic-emotional alpha work, whereas manic distraction only allows a signalling the problem, but doesn’t continue the working through of unconscious guilt about destructive impulses toward the object of ambivalence That delicate and intricate cognitive-emotional thinking-dreaming is always interrupted, in a retreat from the depressive position, where guilt can be evaded by projection onto others (Steiner, 1989) “There is a massive caravan of destructiveness headed towards our borders – we need to build that wall and what’s necessary militarily, before good people are destroyed!” D Trump (President of USA) Manic Denial compared to Sublimatory Reparation I would propose a necessarily blurry, but crucial, distinction between “sublimatory distraction” which attempts to further the symbolic work of mourning-and-creation, and “manic distraction” which attempts to evade mourning and its problem of guilt But, the distinction must always remain somewhat blurry and mysterious, especially to an outside observer For example, what we call “escapist entertainment” may be used to further the work of sublimatory symbolism where the workings of conscious ego logic have been blocked for fear of being overwhelmed emotionally I will say more, later, about the implications for thinking about all unconscious defences as having this dual nature – but, only a careful, patient, understanding of detailed associational thinking and transferential linking in the consulting room can attempt to clarify, and think about this apparent blurring in the nature of distraction – between a shallowing manic defence and a deepening associational expansion of the clinical material and its emotional meanings I would also want to link the use of distraction to Bion’s concept of an attack on linking, as being a fundamental breakage or interruption of the thinking process, whenever this might produce an emotionally painful response – particularly if it is painful and conducive to the discomfort of depressive guilt – and the catastrophic changes, (Bion, 1966) of Oedipal rivalry, separation pains with the need for weaning off one familiar source of nourishment onto a newer, but unfamiliar and uncertain one, such as with irreversible transformations of birth and weaning and leaving home, and eventually death Thus, it can be seen that whilst distraction may seem like a fairly harmless defence, if it sets in chronically, as a major avenue for avoiding psychic pain, then it will begin to have a distinct effect on one’s capacity to think This is problematic, because thinking is also our major way of reducing pain and frustration But again, if there is a temporary use of distraction – which is then used for reflection on one’s feelings and defences – then the temporary distraction may, eventually, aid thinking and self-reflection, albeit at a more unconscious level However, if the distractions accumulate, and become a chronic diversion from the capacity to think about one’s feelings, this unconsciously leads to a feeling of deep despair – that one’s emotional problems can never truly be thought about or understood Clinical anecdotes An architect, still living with his parents in his forties, and who sought help for his loneliness, could only experience, and think about, his feelings when viewing them on a screen, and preferably in what he termed “sci-fi mode” He even called this process his “inner sci-fi channel” – where feeling was “indulged” so long as it seemed many light years away from his daily life – which was highly conflicted and confused But, when highly engaged watching his “Star Trek Discovery”, for example, he was deeply emotionally involved and could think about all sorts of emotional conflict – including his (a)sexuality, and his ongoing struggles with “intimacy v independence” It would have been quite brutalising to label this as mere distraction In fact, he had left a previous therapy because he had been told that he was “too easily distractible” Where he had thought he was “opening up his true feelings” the therapist seemed to interrupt (distract) with such accusations This reminded him of a very painful moment where as a young student he had tried to tell his parents that he felt very isolated at school – but they both seemed very threatened by this feeling, and immediately told him that his schoolwork was the main thing, and that he should never be distracted away from that by other students, or (God forbid) girls Another patient spoke of never catching up on her tax returns, (immediately following a session where, for the first time in her therapy, she acknowledged not being happy in her marriage, but felt that she had become “addicted to the distraction of buying new things” Because of this, supposedly, she couldn’t afford to leave her husband and she felt that the shopping addiction created a deep feeling of shame and disconnection from her friends She tried to compensate for this by constant involvement with “social” media – but she nonetheless felt others could see that she was always sweeping things under the carpet, and that she wasn’t giving to the “culture that nurtured her” It was also yet another distraction, she felt Following a sequence of similar, somewhat stagnant, sessions in the lead-up to a holiday break, where she interrupted either herself or myself by suddenly noticing some object or change in the room, and thereby lost her “threat” (she had meant to say “thread”) she produced a dream where she was, indeed, sweeping something under the carpet – but couldn’t bear to lift it and see what was under it She wanted to - but each time she tried, a little Eddie McGuire (a well-known spurious quiz show host) kept grinning at her and offering her more and more seductive prizes to lure her away from looking He offered to remove the “trouble” for a “modest price” – but, he wouldn’t tell her the price of his “service” His evasiveness made her very suspicious of him, and she had the thought that she could save herself a lot of “trouble” if she just looked and faced down whatever horrible thing might be there But “Eddie” just kept glaring at her – making it clear that he was not going to give up without a fight He was very intimidating, but she realised that she could not afford to keep letting him grab her attention from thinking about what to When I attempted to link Eddie to myself, and to previous feelings before a break where she had seen me as getting her addicted to therapy, only to leave her and to reject her, she nodded, but almost instantaneously drew attention to a book on the other side of the consulting room called “A Strange Way of Killing” She remembered being told, as a child, that everything must die, but she couldn’t bear to believe it to be true – otherwise “how would you live your life? You’d need plenty of distractions.” She mentioned a film where a wife loses her husband, but goes on with Life – she feels that I wouldn’t be too bothered if she died during the break She then mistakenly thinks we have reached the ending of the session She looks glum, and I suggest that she feels as if the break has already started She begins to cry, and says “Yes – everything feels dead.” I say that she can’t imagine getting on with life, if she feels that we are dead to each other in between sessions and over breaks She looks wistful for a brief moment, and then looks at her watch and says abruptly: “When daylight savings start? Never mind – it’s time to go!” If there is a lifetime of chronic, habituated use of distraction – somewhat like the massive island of plastic, the size of Queensland, that lurks in the Atlantic ocean – I believe that a psychic island – perhaps equivalent to Steiner’s idea of a “psychic retreat” or Rosenfeld’s and Meltzer’s idea of an internal perverse narcissistic gang – can form as an enduring unconscious “bypass” structure in the mind, and the capacity for tolerating emotional pain and conflict is drastically curtailed It is probably a crucial component in the maintenance of bipolar states of mind But, in real life, distraction and sublimation may often appear in a rather blurred mix of both – mania and depressive depth, somersaulting over each other in Jack and Jill style – broken crowns alongside pails of quenching water It is why a work of art can sometimes serve as a working through function for the artist, and yet can also prevent the artist from ever changing anything essential or pressing in their lives and relationships Thus it may have very potent transformative capacities, but which then only allows others to experience it with full emotional engagement And yet it was a work that had required so much energy and involvement from the artist, writer, or composer The potential hybridization of Life and Death instinctual motivation may prove endless, and distraction can work for either side as a “triple agent” Bernstein maintained that the deployment of attention at any given time is of great importance to analytic work; and he thought that the patient's ability and willingness to pay attention to fleeting thoughts is often a reliable measure of his analytic progress “Attention is a very important tool in overcoming repression The approach of the unconscious toward consciousness elicits a reinforcement of repression At the same time, there is a deflection of attention toward the outside This deflection of attention constitutes an important aid to the maintenance of repression The impelling quality of action, then, may be not only a measure of the instinctual pressure seeking discharge, but may also reflect, from the side of the ego, the urgency of the need for distraction as an auxiliary function for the maintenance of repression.” (Bernstein, ) Goldberg describes a patient who complained that his partner was always distracted He had asked him a question and he complained bitterly that his companion was impossible, because the reply he received suggested five different possibilities “A great deal of work had been done on his sense of distraction and worry, that he could only feel fleetingly, which gave him the feeling he did not know what was going on In this state of mind he had the greatest difficulty in being able to concentrate and get to the point of a situation He was able to tell me that what he feared most was that he confused everyone around him, i.e he felt that he had done this to his doctor and to the analyst causing them to appear confused, and what they said to be unrelated His thoughts not 'ring a bell', he cannot make contact with parts of himself or the analyst He does however feel that an organized aspect of the analyst and his self remain, that allows him to continue the analytic work.” Goldberg (1987) Distraction in Socio-cultural matrix The child in the family in the community in the global village A couple in their late forties sought my help for an apparently dual-natured problem Their sexual-romantic life had become an almost non-existent background to their “impossibly busy lives.” And also, their son at high-school was becoming increasingly “distracted” at school – and in spite of his natural intelligence, was in danger of failing He was sleeping less and less, and would become very threatening if told to stay off his media devices after 11pm When his parents tried to disconnect him from these devices, he did in fact punch a hole in his bedroom wall Interestingly and infuriatingly, everyone in the family seemed addicted to phones/computer games and other devices In the initial interview with Randolph and his parents Randolph’s father tried to lure me into conversation about my laptop – which his eagle-eye had detected under some books in a far corner of my room - “they’re pretty good those … have you tried the … model ?” This immediately prompted Randolph to ask if I would allow his phone in sessions I asked him what he thought – and he said that he “will leave it on standby, in case we reached any dead spots” In fact, there had been two recent grand-parental deaths and Randolph (named after the Hearst-like, money-obsessed father of his father) had been told not to attend either funeral, in case he became “too intense” Randolph’s mother (M) couldn’t choose a course to advance her studies, because she was always distracted when she saw a better one – and both parents were always distracted away from intercourse with each other They left their bedroom door open of an evening and said that it was inhibiting to hear computer game sounds coming from the kids’ bedrooms, or that they could walk past at any moment There was a joke about how phones these days were much more of a threat than an affair for a marriage Both grandmothers were alcoholic, after losing newborns – following which their husbands were absent and “on the road for work.” M’s mother always told her that children were the biggest distraction in life – “You gotta get out from underneath them!” Melinda’s jaw dropped, and said “How anyone could let children become a distraction?” Then her phone ringer sounded loudly with the song “Don’t stop thinking about tomorrow!” She placed the phone under her chair, but did not turn it off The ineluctability and inevitability of Distraction as an unconscious psychic process We can but only curb our distraction – never totally eliminate it After all, which parent of a curious and zesty toddler could survive a whole day without resorting to some form of distraction, both for the child, and for themselves? But Abrahams noted an interesting difference between two types of parenting: “As parents adapt themselves to the proclivities of their infants, quite early parents … discover that 'fussiness' can be diminished and distractions achieved by offering 'things' for inspection and engagement; parents of the second group, on the other hand, discover that they need to offer themselves When seeking to assert their authority or impose controls, each parent group knows precisely what affective string to pluck and what kind of threat to pose “ (1978 Abrahams) And, as I mentioned earlier, Freud (writing to a friend, as he tries, distractedly to work on his Interpretation of Dreams, says: “I conquered my depression with the aid of a special diet of intellectual matters and now, thanks to the distraction, it is slowly healing.” (Freud, 1898 Letters) And which is the distraction of what? The helical, intertwining dialectic of Life and Death drives in manic – perhaps all - defensiveness Distraction can often, certainly, be a contributing element of minus-K (Bion’s term for the reversal of the process of getting to know something or someone) However, depending on the capacity to examine one’s distraction – it may eventually lead to a furthering of +K – the wish to know more about one’s unconscious issues and conflicts Somehow, far from the madding crowd of bread-and-circus manic distractions, there is also the behind-the-scenes bespoke tailoring of dream-work and creative defences, readying us for the next day’s call to the ongoing battle with slings, arrows and heartache through the magic repairing of deflated narcissism and unrequited love, where, disappointments are eventually redeemed in new hope My conclusion, therefore, abstracting the ideas in this paper, and the work of Alvarez – is that the life and death instincts are not diametrically opposed – but are helically en-coiled and entwined– and in endless interplay This means that the whole conception of defences as “enemies” of psychic growth may have to be made more complex Where a defence is in place, it does shield consciousness from anxiety and pain However, it may also allow psychic work on that pain to proceed, unconsciously Therefore, the role of interpretation is not merely to make one more aware of destructive impulses and diversions – but to also give the patient a chance to join forces with the unconscious’s attempt to find the sources of potentially crippling emotional pain Needless to say, patients arrive at therapy because they are unable to this for themselves I think that too harsh a superego-ish response to distraction can intensify a vicious circle – where manic defences are used because guilt is felt to be unassailable and un-process-able, and then the therapist is perceived (usually in identification with a very harsh internal parent) as criticizing the use of manic distraction, rather than aiding in the understanding of its need I would like to underline the distinction and similarity between the words distraction and destruction – almost sonically identical (language never happens by accident – rather by perfectly over-determined co-incidents condensing and shaping meaning through sound, culture and deep layers of unconscious resonance with “dancing” symbols and a rhythmic sharing of emotional experience and nuanced intention and purpose And there is the word “distraught” (also meaning intensely distracted) which suggests that the psyche can be “pulled apart, in anguish” if manic distraction is allowed to totally dominate one’s state of mind, or mindlessness I don’t take lightly my task in also indicating a potentially helpful and positively creative side of the “distraction coin” Although it is true that: Attention and distraction are simply two morally and culturally charged terms referring to what in reality is the same behavior We label this behavior distraction when we disapprove of its objects and objectives; and we call it attention when we approve of them (Goldberg, ) After all, we say “free associate! – let your mind become distracted.” when we guide our patients towards helping us to understand them We see this sort of distractedness as allowing faith in the unconscious mind to steer us in integrative directions, and not as necessarily getting away from difficult feelings and conflict in manic avoidance of the depressive position I have argued for the clinical dialectical approach of regarding it with caution, but also with respect for the opportunities it may open up, if explored patiently As a crucial way that we tiny humans manage to keep our nerve in such a volatile, complex and often dangerous world, where the irreversibility and starkness of death and impermanence is sewn deeply into the daily fabric of our lives, it may be time to give distraction due recognition, not only as a major manic defence, but as a potential bridge of light between the conscious and the unconscious in that impossibly human struggle to embrace the wider world REFERENCES uncompleted in this version Goldberg, P (1987) The role of distractions in the maintenance of dissociative mental states Int J Psycho-Anal., 68: 511-524                  Hinshelwood Klein Maizels Segal Steiner Alvarez Bion Freud Rosenfeld Abrahams David, Larry Curb Bernstein Jama Pascal American pastor The Age newspaper Trump, D quoted in NY Times ... from that unnerving social observation comedy Curb Your Enthusiasm which, in its concision, may serve to illustrate this under-explored manic defence of distraction (Of course, it would be better... did not turn it off The ineluctability and inevitability of Distraction as an unconscious psychic process We can but only curb our distraction – never totally eliminate it After all, which parent... attention”without too quickly labelling this as always a purely destructive distraction of mind Keeping in mind my suggestion that distraction may be seen as Janus-faced - both as seriously effective