Perspectives on Therapeutic Listening: Theory and Relationships

Simply put, there is nothing, nothing in the world, that can take the place of one person intentionally listening or speaking to another. The act of conscious attending to another person — when one once discovers the taste of it and its significance — can become the center of gravity of the work of love. It is very difficult. Almost nothing in our world supports it or even knows about it.
— Jacob Needleman

This seminar will explore the role of listening, and therefore relationship, in psychotherapy. We will begin by examining our assumptions about the listening process and some of the philosophy of listening, including the effects of therapists’ epistemology. We will then look at how therapists from various traditions view the listening process, the benefits of effective listening, and the harm from ineffective listening. We will explore the role of our own theories in the listening process with our clients, and examine healing in relationship. The seminar will include demonstrations and role plays of the listening process.

The course meets Mondays, 1-3, and is approved for a clinical elective for graduate students in psychology. Students will be expected to keep up with the readings, post questions to a class listserv, and lead a class discussion,

Readings:

Week 1—Getting our bearings: “Knowing” and Technique in Psychotherapy

Frank, J. and Frank, L. (1991) Persuasion and Healing: A Comparative Study of Psychotherapy. Johns Hopkins University Press.
· Chapter 3: Psychotherapy, the Transformation of Meanings

May, R. (1983) The Discovery of Being: Writings in Existential Psychology. W.W. Norton.
· Chapter 12: Concerning Therapeutic Technique

"On professionalism" by Miriam Greenspan. In When boundaries betray us: beyond illusions of what is ethical in therapy and life. Ed: Heyward, Carter; HarperSanFransisco, 1993 pp 193-205.

Elbow, P. (1986) Methodological Doubting and Believing: Contraries in Inquiry. In Embracing Contraries: Explorations in Learning and Teaching, Oxford University Press.

Weinberg, G. (2000) The Therapist’s Personality. In, I. Rabinowitz (ed.), Inside Therapy. St. Martin’s Press.

Week 2—Historical Approaches

Thompson, M. G. (1994) The Truth about Freud’s Technique: The Encounter with the Real. New York University Press.
· Chapter 17: Freud’s “Recommendations to Physicians Practising Psycho-analysis” (1912)

Sullivan, H. S. (1970) The Psychiatric Interview. Norton.
· Chapter 1: Basic Concepts in the Psychiatric Interview.

Langs, R. (1978) The Listening Process. Jason Aronson.
· Chapter 1: A First Foray into Listening.

Hoffman, K. and H. Hafner-Marti. Frieda Fromm-Reichmann's Principles of Intensive Psychotherapy. From http://www.erichfromm.de/lib_2/hoffmann02.html

Week 3: Language, Listening, and Hermeneutics

Fuimara, Gemma Corradi (1990). The Other Side of Language: A philosophy of listening. Routledge.
· Chapter 8: Dialogical interaction and listening
· Chapter 9: On inner listening

Anderson, T. (1996) Language is Not Innocent. In Handbook of Relational Diagnosis and Dysfunctional Family Patterns. F. W. Kaslow (Ed.). Wiley.

Chessick, R. A. (1992) What Constitutes the Patient in Psychotherapy: Alternative Approaches to Understanding Humans. Jason Aronson.
· Introduction
· Chapter 3: Hermeneutics

Stolorow, R.D. (2001) The Phenomenology of Trauma and the Absolutisms of Everyday Life: A Personal Journey. Psyche Matters, online at http://psychematters.com/papers/stolorow.htm

Week 4: Where do we listen from? Deconstructing ourselves.

Freedman, J. and Combs, G. (1996) Narrative Therapy: The Social Construction of Preferred Realities. W.W. Norton
· Chapter 2: The Narrative Metaphor and Social Construction: A Postmodern Worldview
· Chapter 3: Opening Space for New Stories

Gergen, K. (1994) Transcending Narrative in the Therapeutic Context. Chapter 10 of Realities and Relationships: Soundings in Social Construction. Harvard University Press. Pp. 236-252.

Anderson, H. and H. Goolishian (1992). The Client is the Expert: a Not-Knowing Approach to Therapy. In McNamee, S. and K.J. Gergen (eds.), Therapy as Social Construction, London: Sage.

Week 5: From Hermeneutics to Relationship

Miller, J.B. and Stiver, I.P. (1991). A relational reframing of therapy. Work in Progress #52, The Stone Center, Wellesley, MA.

Miller, J.B. and Stiver, I. (1997) Chapters 2 and 3 of The Healing Connection: How Women Form Relationships in Therapy and in Life. Beacon Press. Pp. 24-62.

Herman, J. (1992) A Healing Relationship. Chapter 7 of Trauma and Healing, Basic Books. Pp. 133-154.

Anderson, H. (1997) Chapters 5 & 6 of Conversation, Language, and Possibilities: A Postmodern Approach to Therapy. BasicBooks.
· Chapter 6: Therapy as Dialogical Conversation

Week 6: I-Thou Relationship

Friedman, M. (ed.) Martin Buber and the Human Sciences. State University of New York Press.
· Chapter 22: Grof-Taylor, R., Philosophy of Dialogue and Feminist Psychology

Buber, M. (1957) The William Alanson White Memorial Lectures, 4th Series. Part I: Distance and Relation, and Part II: The Social and the Interhuman. Psychiatry, 20 (2), Pp. 95-113.

Ticho, E.A. (1974) Donald W. Winnicott, Martin Buber and the Theory of Personal Relationships. Psychiatry, 37, 240-254.

Friedman, M. (1992) Dialogue and the Human Image: Beyond Humanistic Psychology.
Sage Publications.
· Chapter 8: Dialogical Psychology

Week 7: Nuts and Bolts

Weingarten, K. (1998) The Small and the Ordinary: The Daily Practice of a Postmodern Narrative Therapy. Family Process, 37, 3-15.

Weingarten, K. (1992) A Consideration of Intimate and Non-Intimate Interactions in Therapy. Family Process, 1992, 45-59.

Stolorow, R.D. and Atwood, G.E. (1992) Contexts of Being: The Intersubjective Foundations of Psychological Life. The Analytic Press.
· Chapter 7: Varieties of Therapeutic Impasse

Friedman, M. (ed.) Martin Buber and the Human Sciences. State University of New York Press.
· Chapter 24: Hycner, R., The Wisdom of Resistance: A dialogical Psychotherapy Approach

Snyder, M. (1995) “Becoming”: A Method for Expanding Systemic Thinking and Deepening Empathic Accuracy. Family Process, 1995, 241-253.

Week 8: Ethics from a Relational Perspective

Anderson, H. (1997) Chapters 5 & 6 of Conversation, Language, and Possibilities: A Postmodern Approach to Therapy. BasicBooks.
· Chapter 5: A Philosophical Stance: Therapists’ Position, Expertise, and Responsibility

Freedman, J. and Combs, G. (1996) Narrative Therapy: The Social Construction of Preferred Realities. W.W. Norton
· Chapter 10: Relationships and Ethics

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