The analyst's listening: for, to, with

Analytic approaches to listening have favored something that is more akin to vision, consequently shaping the technique, aims and understandings of psychoanalysis in terms of the production of understandings and meanings. The aural aspects of listening have mostly been subsumed under this emphasis on the visual. Two models of analytic listening based in the visual are initially presented, listening-for, and listening-to. Illustrations show how listening in these approaches emphasize "seeing" (i.e. discovering or creating conscious understandings or meanings) pertaining to unconscious contents. A third mode of listening, listening-with, based in an aural approach, seeks neither understanding nor meaning thought to be hidden, in need of (co)construction, or needing to be made figurable. Listening-with does not seek to symbolize content either already there or understood to be present as unrepresented. Content is not what is listened for or to, understanding or meaning not the goal. Instead it is an abiding within a space not only of not-knowing but of not trying to know. Exploring the unlanguaged from this latter perspective will involve those portions of the analysand's mental life that are never transformed analytically into symbolized content, as well as experiences involving the patient's mental life that do not call for any such transformation or understanding. The first part of this paper will feature a theoretical discussion of these modes of listening and the second part will illustrate the conception of listening-with via three vignettes selected from the literature, each demonstrating different aspects of the position. These modes of listening are considered to not operate exclusively of each other, but are heuristically separated for the current investigation in order to highlight attention to listening to phenomena existing outside of symbolization or referentiality, phenomena that may never take a form.