Le soin, une éthique de l'attention ?

Paying attention to another person, as a method and as an ethic, mobilizes receptivity and understanding. It is in the ties, referring to the metaphor of Russian dolls, that responsiveness is shaped, sharpened and restored. It implies availability, sensitivity and listening, and is simultaneously directed outwards towards another and inwards towards oneself, in a double synergistic movement. Almost as an oxymoron, attention to unconscious processes would be paradoxical if it did not suggest a detour by oneself in order to pay attention to the other, and the detour by the other, by others of the group, to elucidate the processes themselves. Availability and the vitality of the attention capacities need a capacity of “detoxification”, guaranteed by the ties, especially those established in the oversight group. Responsiveness implies acceptance to hold without showing emotions and unpresentable or disturbing thoughts, without mobilization of defence systems either in acts or thoughts. This recommends sobriety of action and speech. Each situation of care will be able to build the conditions for an “institutional capacity” to assure the quality and the regeneration processes of attention by the ties, skills, mechanisms and time required. Attention thus appears as an ethic. It simultaneously opens the way to the encounter of the other and of one's self.