More about Zerstreutheit. It’s a special and pernicious kind of distraction which William James thought the direct opposite of attention.
Everyone knows what attention is. It is the taking possession by the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of what seem several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought. Focalization, concentration, of consciousness are of its essence. It implies withdrawal from some things in order to deal effectively with others, and is a condition which has a real opposite in the confused, dazed, scatterbrained state which in French is called distraction, and Zerstreutheit in German.
James, W. (1890). The Principles of Psychology. New York: Henry Holt, Vol. 1, pp. 403-404.
OK, I confess: I got that from Wikipedia (art. ‘Attention’)
Here’s someone pretty far gone:
Ich kenne einen Kollegen, der so zerstreut ist, da? er in einer Dreht?r f?nfmal im Kreis l?uft, bis ihm einf?llt, ob er rein oder raus wollte.
I have a colleague who’s so distracted [zerstreut] that he goes five times round in a revolving door before it comes to him whether he wants to go in or out.
Does English ‘distraction’ capture the semi-pathological quality of this condition? Everyone is distracted from time to time, whereas what we’re talking about here is an endemic scatteredness, a more-or-less constant, habitual flickering between objects of attention. Continue reading »