Extending the Psychoanalytic Listening Paradigm: Listening with All the Senses

Extending the Psychoanalytic Listening Paradigm: Listening with all the Senses guides readers through the nuances of non-verbal communication in the analytic setting.

Presenting a dialogue between three eminent psychoanalysts, this book is made up of numerous case studies and commentaries on patients presenting difficulties with symbolisation, including borderline and primitive mental states. Each analyst presents a different aspect of psychoanalytic listening - body, action, and speech - from a different perspective, before the three come together to analyse these situations. The authors highlight the importance of listening as a device for the analyst, showing how it is used not only to make the repressed emerge, to repair what is traumatic and to activate the continuity of the self, but also as a contribution to constructing the subject throughout the sequence of interactions with the other-than-self. The authors propose an extension of the concept of the unconscious and of the tools used by the analyst in the consulting room: the unconscious states not yet verbalised of the first experiences of psychic life are reached through listening to communications that use other sensory communication channels outside of the verbal.

Bookended by a preface from Stefano Bolognini and an afterword from Francesco Barale, this accessible yet thorough volume is a vital tool for any psychoanalyst or psychotherapist.

Tiziana Bastianini is a psychologist, psychoanalyst, and Training and Supervising analyst for the Italian Psychoanalytic Society and IPA. She has worked with young adults in a mental health service, and previously worked in psychiatric clinics. She lives and works in Rome, Italy.

Anna Ferruta is a psychologist, psychoanalyst and Training and Supervising analyst for the Italian Psychoanalytic Society and IPA. She is a member of the editorial board of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis. She specialises in serious diseases and primitive mental functioning, and is a consultant and supervisor in psychiatric institutions and research centres. She lives and works in Milan, Italy.

Benedetta Guerrini Degl’Innocenti is a psychiatrist, psychoanalyst and Training and Supervising analyst for the Italian Psychoanalytic Society and IPA. She is a member of the editorial board of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis. Her areas of interest and research are psychoanalytic work with unrepresented mental states, transgenerational issues related to the body and the transmission of psychoanalysis. She lives and works in Florence, Italy.