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This article has its starting point in a clinical situation in which I found that the way I was listening to the patient had changed. Starting from there, I attempted a theoretical excursion to find the answer to the question: “What happened?”. This article is about the milestones of this personal journey.
Listening is a specific theme of psychoanalytic work, but is easily found in multiple cultural facets. Listening can be subsumed to temporality by the presence of the two gods of time - Chronos and Kairos.
Psychoanalytic listening involves an inclusion and exclusion of different contents that are created ‘here and now’ in the psychotherapeutic labour. A medical treatment can be seen as a hindrance to therapy and therefore excluded, or it can be seen as a content of therapy and therefore included. Therapeutic experiences become fundamentally different.
In a more general picture, we could see the history of psychoanalysis itself as a permanent attempt to include and exclude different approaches, theories, methods, concepts, etc.
From my point of view listening involves a permanent dynamic work between ECRO (referential scheme) and the state of spontaneity that can become creative for the patient and the therapeutic relationship.