OBSERVATIONS ON PSYCHOANALYTIC LISTENING

Psychoanalysis has long presented ideal listening as an oscillation between Freud's ''evenly suspended attention'' and a more focused attention. This paper explores modes of listening as they are manifest in the author's clinical experience. Two modes are evident: a receptivity, mostly out of awareness, which becomes shaped and primed toward specific expectations; and a concurrent, more conscious and directed mode of listening through specific filters. The former is described as ''listening alertly from a distance'' and the latter as ''listening for implications.''