Extending the Psychoanalytic Listening Paradigm

Extending the Psychoanalytic Listening Paradigm: Listening with all the Senses guides readers through the nuances of non-verbal communication in the analytic setting.

Presenting a dialogue between three eminent psychoanalysts, this book is made up of numerous case studies and commentaries on patients presenting difficulties with symbolisation, including borderline and primitive mental states. Each analyst presents a different aspect of psychoanalytic listening – body, action, and speech – from a different perspective, before the three come together to analyse these situations. The authors highlight the importance of listening as a device for the analyst, showing how it is used not only to make the repressed emerge, to repair what is traumatic and to activate the continuity of the self, but also as a contribution to constructing the subject throughout the sequence of interactions with the other-than-self. The authors propose an extension of the concept of the unconscious and of the tools used by the analyst in the consulting room: the unconscious states not yet verbalised of the first experiences of psychic life are reached through listening to communications that use other sensory communication channels outside of the verbal.

Bookended by a preface from Stefano Bolognini and an afterword from Francesco Barale, this accessible yet thorough volume is a vital tool for any psychoanalyst or psychotherapist.