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The “hidden question” is the centerpiece of Robert Gardner's volume of brief essays on teaching. “On becoming more attentive to questions my students were trying most to ask, I was surprised to find … the most promising and urgent questions were frequently asked at edge-of-awareness: Nascent questions, latent questions, quavering questions, hidden questions, questions almost-but-not-quite- asked …” (p. 80). Gardner's student, like a psychoanalytic patient, communicates indirectly, hoping that the latent, hidden question will be “answered.” Hearing the question requires a forbearance from the “furor to teach,” a teaching disorder analysts are particularly prone to. Teachers have a strong urge to teach what they want to, not what the student wishes to learn.
In other words, what is required is a psychoanalytic sort of listening to the student, picking up on “irrelevant” side comments, body language, and affect. Just as the student's overt questions are not what the teacher should respond to, the teacher should not try to tell the student what to do, as tempting as this is. Such an approach, according to Gardner, would be akin to making id interpretations. Instead, the teacher's response should be given by indirection. Gardner does not prescribe how the teacher should intervene, recognizing that different styles of teaching are comfortable for different teachers.
I recently began supervising a psychiatric resident relatively well grounded in the principles of psychoanalytic psychotherapy, though not very experienced in its practice. She presented a clinic patient who seemed treatable, on the neurotic end of the spectrum. Despite what I felt was reasonably good work, and a rather sophisticated understanding of the patient's process, the resident bemoaned her lack of ability to treat the patient properly. Over several more meetings this unhappiness rose to the level of “I'll never be able to do this work!” While my impulse was to reassure her once again, I found myself thi