William James in The Principles of Psychology (1980) "Everyone knows what attention is. It is the taking possession of the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of what seem several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought. Focalisation, concentration of consciousness are of its essence. It implies a withdrawal from some things in order to deal effectively with others."
"...(The) two part neurological sorting operation allows you to focus by enhancing the most compelling, or 'salient,' physical object or 'high value' mental subject in your ken and suppressing the rest." (9)
Charles Darwin in The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals (1870) "Pain is increased by attending to it."
"According to psychology's negative bias theory, we pay more attention to unpleasant feelings such as fear, anger, sadness because they're simply more powerful that the agreeable sort." (32)
"Debriefing-style counseling after a trauma often aggravates the victim's stress-related symptoms...and 4 in 10 bereaved people do better without grief therapy." (52)
"Even when asleep, the melancholy tend to focus on futility. In a classic dream, one of Beck's patients saw himself putting coins into a vending machine, then just standing there, waiting for a soda or a refund that never came. The prevalence of this bleak mindset among the depressed...persuaded Beck that this noirish 'selective abstraction' was a crucial element of the disorder"