Lost, found, and lost again: the seeking self in attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)

With a backdrop of increasing cultural awareness of attention -deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and rapidly increasing levels of diagnosis in childhood, adolescence, and adulthood, this paper considers the question of ‘attention’ as a diagnostic criterion. In particular, the paper is concerned with an approach to attention that links this to some of the most basic aspects of early relationships and that seeks to reckon with what may be taking place for children so diagnosed. The paper argues for a shift of perspective from conceptualising ADHD as an exclusively ‘hard-wired’ neurobiological condition to one that allows for a more nuanced and psychologically informed sense of attention and inattention and their role in emotional life. Drawing on a wide range of psychodynamic conceptualisations, we are concerned with the movement between disappointment and pining for something unmet or lost, and efforts to find or re-find this. With only a partial sense of what is sought, the effort meets frustration and a cycle of felt loss, seeking, partial finding, and the encounter again with loss is set off. The paper draws on concepts of clinging as a basic human activity; object-seeking as a primary orientation; and the development of a capacity to be alone.