Abstract

In this article I shall give a brief account of psychoanalytic listening. I shall then consider the ontology of such listening to a session and compare it to the ontology of attending to paintings and poems. Psychoanalysts are interested not merely in what is understood through listening but in the process of listening. I shall proceed to ask how possible it is to represent that process. Finally, I raise some questions about how the capacity to listen psychoanalytically might be taught or passed on.