ABSTRACT
I shall refer throughout this essay to the concept of après-coup (Nachträglichkeit, ‘deferred action’ according to Strachey), which entails the twin elements of anticipation and retroactive meaning. I hope that the reader too, by a similar retroactive process, will find that new light has been cast on what is already known about psychic reality and, thereby, links will have been forged between the concepts of psychic reality, historical truths and psychic truths, on the one hand, and those of decentred listening and misunderstanding, on the other. In proposing the concepts of ‘decentred listening’ and of ‘listening to listening’, I wish to add a new dimension to the already familiar notions of evenly suspended attention and free association.
