About The “Third Ear” In Psychoanalysis: A Review and Critical Evaluation of: Theodor Reik's “Listening with the Third Ear; The Inner Experience of A Psychoanalyst”

Theodor Reik has been known since the early days of psychoanalysis. He is known as a student and friend of Sigmund Freud, and as the author of important contributions to psychoanalysis. One of the earliest was “The Ritual” , to which Freud wrote the preface. He later wrote “The Unknown Murderer” (1932) (4), in which he formulated the relation between murder and the Oedipus situation and other crimes which are committed out of an unconscious feeling of guilt.

The book, which in content and style was a culmination point in the development of Theodor Reik, appeared in 1936 under the title: “Surprise and the Psychoanalyst.” (5) In it Reik described the role intuition plays in the process of analytic understanding.

This book was followed later by “From Thirty Years with Freud” (6) and “Masochism in Modern Man.” (7) The book before “Listening with the Third Ear” was an analytic study of the “Psychology of Sex Relations” (8) where Theodor Reik attempts to define the difference between sex and love. With a record of such important and thoughtful analytic contributions the new book “Listening With the Third Ear” (3) deserves the attention and careful study of the psychoanalyst.

The first impression the reader gains from this book is that of an immediate and personal contact with the author. This book is eminently an autobiography and in many places intimate subjective experiences are related, as the sub-title implies. Thirty-seven years of analytic experience are utilized; they were years of work with patients, which was based upon, and is described as, an unconscious (and conscious) communication between them and the author. Even the dedication of the book is a delight to the analytic reader; it is dedicated to the author's wife, “who puts up with her husband and his strange profession.” The forgotten pioneer and unknown co-worker of psychoanalysis is given a modest but meaningful recognition.

The aim of the whole book is an appeal for simple, human psychological