ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses in some depth—three situations where an analyst must limit the scope of analytic listening, temper the use of analytic listening, and put analytic listening aside altogether. The analyst’s conduct during supervision of candidates, his or her attention to the discourse in public media, and his or her receptiveness to ordinary conversations at home constitute these three situations, respectively. One measure to safeguard the functional astuteness and moral integrity of psychoanalytic listening paradoxically comes from limiting its use. While this statement might appear curious, more strange is the fact that textbooks of psychoanalysis and monographs on psychoanalytic technique make no mention of the limits and bounds of analytic listening. This might be due to their focusing exclusively on the clinical encounter and not upon the analyst’s listening, thinking, and speaking functions in non-clinical situations. There is some diminution of the expanse of the supervisor’s analytic listening along with a comparable restraint upon his interpretive activity.
