Listening is not the same as simply hearing. Hearing describes the ability to perceive and process sounds. Anyone who lacks a hearing impairment can hear. Listening is more than that.

Lacan warns that when we understand something, that is precisely when we stop listening. When we believe we’ve understood, we are imbuing what we hear with senses and meanings of our own. Listening, on the other hand, is making room for the other in us. It’s not getting ahead of ourself, saturating that space, but leaving it free to be filled up with something other than ourselves. To understand precociously is to hinder this flow. And this flow is what speaks of the person who is speaking. Keeping that space open allows for listening to all that is said and all that seeps through in the way that it said, in between the lines, in the recurring themes and patterns.

That is why the psychotherapist’s listening is not the same as the kind of listening present in a conversation between friends or in a bar (which can have therapeutic effects and which is also important). The psychotherapist’s listening is their work tool, a technique that needs to be cultivated and honed.

Psychoanalysis is “seated” on a tripod: theoretical studies, the very own psychotherapist’s psychotherapy and supervision. Between the legs of a tripod a space is created – a space where listening can take place. Through theoretical studies (both on the functioning of pysche’s processes, as well as the historical, social and cultural processes that are part of the subjective constitution) the psychotherapist is able to listen beyond what is in the said in the patient’s speech, analyzing as a text. The psychotherapist listens to the context and the subtext, what is explicit and that which lies between the lines. Listening that does not consider specificities of class, race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality is, in fact, not listening. The psychotherapist’s own psychotherapeutical process, in turn, defines a space in which the psychotherapist can work through their own issues and desires so that they do not transfer and project them onto the patient. It is a way of “decontaminating” their listening. Finally, supervision aims to lend the psychotherapist another pair of ears. In discussing their clinical cases and their practice with a supervisor, the psychotherapist can explore what may be affecting their listening and thus constantly improve it.

Listening is the greatest tool a (good) psychotherapist has. The person who knows most about the patient, despite at times not having access to that knowledge, is the patient (you!). By listening, the analyst accesses this knowledge and transmits it to the patient who can learn to listen and read themself, thus reacquainting with oneself, so as to create new paths of possibility ahead.