ABSTRACT
Any consideration of “analytic listening” must begin with the injunctions made by Sigmund Freud that the analyst should maintain an attitude of “not directing one’s notice to anything in particular” and “adjust himself to the patient as a telephone receiver is adjusted to the transmitting microphone”. Listening requires not being in a hurry to interrupt the narrative, to question, to arrive at conclusions, and to give the material being offered a readily well-polished form. A related facet of listening is the “ingestion” of someone else’s spoken words. Such openness also has the remote echoes of an infant gladly taking in the maternal breast. The first indication for refusing to listen is when the patient is repeating something ad nauseum. One might go on listening to endless repetitions or instinctualized discourse as a form of masochistic submission to the patient.
