ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses methodology in relation firstly to the recommendations at the heart of the standard model of psychoanalytic listening. Secondly as supplemented by the extension to these of Wilfred Bion’s methodology, and thirdly considering elements of psychoanalyst's method suited for a third expansion of the listening component, to take into account the findings of Holzhey-Kunz in the domain of the patient’s fundamental strivings to understand themselves and their world philosophically. The chapter suggests that these dimensions, the psychoanalytic and the ontological, require the inclusion of a third, that of the dramaturgical, because the principles of drama are inherently part of the structure and dynamic functioning of the mind of the human being, and this is evident in the very nature of object relations. As described by Sigmund Freud this is the core component of the psychoanalytic method.
