Listening to Audiotapes of Psychoanalytic Sessions and Rating Them: A Clinician Engages in Process Research

Listening to hours, rating them, and then discussing the ratings and the process of the therapy is a terribly rich process that mirrors other clinical processes, such as supervision, but is also radically different from these processes. I think that while the listening that I do as a researcher is similar to the listening that I do as a clinician, there are unique components to the research listening that help to improve my therapeutic functioning. These include a subjective sense that analysis is a worthwhile endeavor, and the ability to more accurately label, evaluate, and describe what it is that I am doing in any given clinical hour. Finally, I think that there are advantages to not having the person doing the treating be in the room as the work is heard and discussed.

The first component of the research process is listening to the work of other analysts. This is not something that I have had the experience of doing except in the context of this research, aside from my own analysis and seeing a few brief role-playing sessions of analyses. I have to admit to a certain privileging of the analytic hour-I think of it as a sacred space and expect there to be qualitative differences between it and psychotherapy. I think that carries over to listening in on the work of my peers. I feel privileged to be allowed into the analytic hour, and appreciate the analysand's willingness to let me be privy to their thoughts and lives.

While I have watched videotapes of my own psychotherapy while I was in training and now videotapes of my supervisees, I have rarely heard the work of seasoned clinicians. I have wondered if there would be a qualitative difference between the seasoned clinician and the novice, and also between psychoanalysis and psychotherapy.

There are significant differences between listening to analyses and tapes of other clinical work. The analytic silence is something that distinguishes the work. Analysands talk longer and seem to be interrupted less, and there is,