The Experience Of Philosophical Listening

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

Do we know how to listen?

Do we really hear our client, so that we understand what he really wants to say?

Alice Holzhei-Kunz, a student and colleague of Medard Boss, argues that for this you need to listen in a special way - philosophically.

Only by listening with the “third, philosophical ear” can one clearly hear to which ontological given the client is “especially sensitive”. Alice sees the client not as a deficit one, but as a “reluctant philosopher” who has a special gift - to be supersensitive to existentials: finiteness, guilt and responsibility, anxiety, loneliness …

According to Alice, the suffering of clients is precisely related to this special gift: - for a person with special sensitivity, harmless everyday things lose their harmlessness: an ordinary mistake leads to despair, the need to make a decision is horrifying, an ordinary spat causes universal grief.

Listening philosophically, one can hear ontological inclusions in the client's complaints, understand what he is especially sensitive to, what desire it is connected with, and in what ways he is trying to realize this illusory desire. To illustrate what has been said, Alice gives an example of a client who is constantly late for a session, embarrassedly apologizes and excuses, and again comes after the appointed time.

Hearing with the “psychoanalytic ear” one could assume unwillingness to obey, transference, rebellion of the client against authority. The "intersubjective ear", listening to the relationships that are developing in the therapeutic space here and now, would catch the client's concern about the therapist's expectations or his detachment. “I would assume she has a special sensitivity to getting started. This is already a philosophical ear,”explains Alice.

The experience of philosophical listening to the client's life story allows the therapist to understand that it is difficult for this woman to start her life herself, because then she will have to give up the illusory desire to remain innocent, because when we ourselves start something, we are responsible for this choice and its consequences. “So when we listen Dasein-analytically, then we listen to something that concerns us - not on a personal level, but directly concerns us as people. We need to start too, and it can be difficult. And if the therapist does not want to face it (with guilt), then he will not be able to hear it in the patient”[3].

Alice Holzhei-Kunz's ideas inspire and even, I would say, spiritualize my relationship with clients today. Although the search for an answer to the question of which ontological given is especially sensitive to this client is not easy and every time it takes a lot of time, it makes me re-read many books, but my desire to hear philosophically is rewarded at the moment when I feel with my whole being - here it!

As in the case of a client who came to the appointment with a seemingly very clearly defined problem of parent-child relations, but the confusion of both the client and the therapist that arose during the therapy, focused joint efforts on understanding the meaning of the client's anxiety for the lives of loved ones. Attacks of anxiety overtook the client in moments of absolute well-being, as if illustrating Heidegger's “Horror can wake up in the most harmless situations. Even darkness is not required … " [2].

Driven by confusion, I turned to supervising and seeking answers about the meaning of anxiety in existential philosophers and therapists. The quintessence of searches and reflections was embodied in the idea of E. van Dorzen that “It is largely due to the experience of anxiety that we“wake up”in the face of the possibility of our own being. Anxiety is the key to our authenticity " [1].

What seemed to be lying on the surface, which was repeatedly discussed in therapy sessions - the fear of death, the injustice of a world in which death takes dear and close people - in the case of this client turned out, in my opinion, to be the answer to her special sensitivity to the fact that Martin Heidegger calls the call of conscience.

"Conscience evokes the self of presence from being lost in people", - writes Heidegger [2]. It informs us that our presence is carried out in a mode of inauthenticity, and reminds a person of his capabilities. To drown out the piercing silence of the call and not feel guilty for refusing to choose oneself, a much stronger voice had to turn on. And what could be more deafening than the fear of death?

Literature:

1. Van Derzen E. Challenge of authenticity according to Heidegger. // Existential tradition: philosophy, psychology, psychotherapy. - 2004. - No. 5.
2. 2. Heidegger M. Being and time / Per. with him. V. V. Bibikhin - SPb.: "Science", - 2006.
3. Holzhei-Kunz A. Modern Dasein Analysis: Existential Realities in Psychotherapeutic Practice. Synopsis of the seminar // Existentia: psychology and psychotherapy. - 2012. - No. 5. - P.22-61.