You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
AT FIRST GLANCE LISTENING IS a commonplace phenomenon that does not deserve special consideration. A closer look dispels this impression and discloses a highly intricate manifold system of a transactional nature.
I addressed myself elsewhere (1978) to the epistemological tenet that thinking, listening and speaking, perceiving are not independent, self-contained phenomena. My emphasis was that all such processes are contextual in nature and cannot be isolated from the particular setting in which they occur. In the therapeutic situation the material coming from the patient is never projected on the therapist as a tabula rasa or blank screen, but rather onto a person whose way of listening in turn contributes to the ongoing patterning of communication. Psychoanalytic listening is definitely a two-way phenomenon. The analyst's attending attitude can either call forth or discourage the emergence of significant data related to the patient's self-image. The patient as speaker, the analyst as listener create jointly an atmosphere that, it is hoped, enables the patient to address himself to highly personal issues for which the analyst has a receptive ear. I also suggested that the construct of self-esteem may serve as a workable, empirical basis from which to obtain therapeutically useful data especially if the preconceived notion of psychological conflict as a primary cause of most cognitive distortions is transcended (Chrzanowski 1979a), (1979b).
In my analytic work I have deeply concerned myself with the complex manifestations of self-esteem within the context of