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Freud invented psychoanalysis during his self-analysis and through it (Anzieu, 1990, p. 4), discovering a specific perceptual attitude for which he coined the term »evenly hovering attention« in 1912. However, he subsequently refrained from elevating the associated idea of an unconscious cognitive process to the central guiding principle of his method. His groundbreaking discoveries of resistance and, in particular, transference caused what had previously been central to him, »guessing the unconscious«, to recede into the background. He did not consider »evenly hovering attention« to be a necessary means of cognition for the perception and investigation of transference and countertransference. Despite its insolubility, however, the paradox contained in this concept is at the same time constitutive for psychoanalysis. The aim is to show that, according to Freud’s own logic, the object of knowledge in psychoanalysis can only arise from and in the connection between the unconscious of both parties involved in the psychoanalytic situation and can only be examined and possibly modified within this context. Bion’s »reverie« as his central methodological concept takes Freud’s idea beyond what he himself conceived and, in doing so, brings it to fuller fruition.
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