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What strikes me first about this article is the sense of satisfaction I had with the experience of reading it. I was, in fact, glad to have stumbled upon the opportunity. Contrary to my initial reservations about engaging with conceptual/theoretical discussions and scholarly elucidation of psychoanalytic theory as a sometimes dry, intellectual addendum to my work, I found Reis's paper filled with an appreciation of the multiple sensory channels involved in the ‘simple’ act of analytic listening. I found myself going back again and again to his wording, or the rich quotations that support his assertions about the nature of and focus on the communication between analyst and patient and what is done with that during an analytic session.
As his title states, Reis intends and delivers on a promise to look at three models of analytic listening: the first two being listening to a patient and listening for what he describes as ‘visual’ content. By ‘visual’ Reis is referring to ‘seeing’ or discovering meaning in, or understanding of, unconscious content arising in the session. He adds a third idea in the act of listening with the patient, an ‘aural’ model according to Reis, forgoing the need to either
symbolize or understand material presented, but of ‘abiding within a space of not only not knowing, but not trying to know’. Understanding that there is no exclusivity around the use or presence of these models within a single analytic hour, I found Reis's exploration of the third model the most syntonic with a Jungian appreciation and sensibility to the act of listening in my consulting room. While the search for meaning and understanding are not unimportant in Jungian analysis, as in psychoanalysis, listening with a patient opens for me what Jung addresses in the realms of synchronicity and working in the psychoid realms of psyche. Bringing an emphasis on the shared sensory experience in the analytic hour, I believe there is a meeting of theory and the mystery that I hold