ABSTRACT
For the psychoanalytic therapist, each piece of imaginative literature affords its own unique opportunities for instruction in creative listening. For the psychoanalytically informed reader, entering into extraordinary universe generates an experience that informs much about the fluid modes in which analysand and analyst alike take in, engage with, and process the inner and relational world at any one moment in the analytic process. This chapter introduces various dimensions of what To the Lighthouse has taught about psychoanalytic listening. The novel is unrivaled among other works of fiction in capturing the interdependence of subjectivity and intersubjectivity that informs contemporary clinical psychoanalysis. The chapter discusses how developing form of analytic listening has influenced ideas about analytic technique and has led people to believe that closely attuned, imaginative listening is not so much preparatory to making interpretations, but, more so, is integral to the very nature of therapeutic action.
