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In a long, metapsychological article the author draws on his own previous writings, as well as on Freud and post-Sullivanians, to discuss the differences in qualitative aspects of attention and their clinical implications. He differentiates allocentric interests from autocentric attention; the former is an ideal wherein
the motive for open attention to the object has no particular purpose other than the wish to relate to it, to know it as it is, out of interest in it. This interest does not want to use the object but rather to experience it. It implies that the subject is also open toward himself (nonrepressive). The obsessive-compulsive style suffers from a lack of allocentric attention because the attitude of the attention is narrow and in sharp focus toward the object for defensive purposes. The obsessive may scan his environment or the objects in it, but without the wide focus which is in the service of a global perception or knowing. This global perceptiveness is differentiated from the infant's global perceptiveness described by autocentric attention in that there is psychic structure and a motive—the desire to relate. In a lengthy section on perception and development, the author rejects the limitations imposed by Freud's pleasure-unpleasure principle and states that 'vital sensations' of the early infantile period have a qualitative rather than just a quantitative or psychoeconomic aspect, although the evidence he adduces for this is inconclusive. He does not develop his notion that consciousness is attached to sense organs directed toward the external world prior to the advent of the reality principle.
The author concludes with some thoughtful comments on how an unwonted isolating tendency pervades our lives and grows as part of our cultural heritage, leading to fragmentation and alienation. He sees the growth of sensory awareness training, 'encounter' groups, and the 'hippy' protest as reaction against this destructive tendency.