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Listening or being deaf to others? Listening or not listening? Listening to another or lost in oneself? The authors of this review were sitting together, decades ago, while the younger was discussing something of importance to her as a late adolescent. The older was in the midst of writing a lengthy piece on oedipal dynamics. In the midst of the conversation, the older one stood up, lost in his own thoughts, left the room, closed the door behind him and went to his office, all without a word. A breach! As we write together many years later it cannot have been an irreparable one. Listening and being deaf may oscillate in a sinus rhythm.
A reader might well be struck, as they approach Akhtar's volume, an edited collection that represents the contributions to the Margaret Mahler Child Development Symposium held in Philadelphia April 8, 2006. (Without going into details, it is of note that these meetings have been a central feature of the training scene in Philadelphia. For years and while she was still alive, they centered about Margaret Mahler and the co-authors she brought with her. The meetings were supported by her many students in Philadelphia, including Selma Kramer and the many others who studied child analysis with Dr. Mahler.) These reviewers were enlivened by the title: How central to thinking! What an apt title! Listening to Others. We were, however, perplexed by the cover. Naked torsos of women, facing each other but in opposite directions, fleshy hills with just discernible contours of breasts, a dovelike dark space in between. How does one begin a conversation with authors who have chosen these images? It was something akin to a patient whose first call shocks: “I have not slept in three years and two months” or “I have no idea why I'm calling you, but I'm looking for my 17th therapist”. Naked women and listening. Who knew what was to come next.
It was time to open the book and confront the printed word, and its earliest utterances. The first five words of