Listening

It is planned to begin a book called “Listening” during the stay at STIAS which will present, in a form accessible to readers with diverse interests, a method of psychological inquiry that was developed with graduate students at Harvard and taught for many years. The method, known as the Listening Guide, begins with questions about voice: Who is speaking and to whom? In what physical context or space? Telling what stories about which relationships? In what societal and cultural frameworks? It then specifies a series of “listenings” as a way of attending to the layered nature of psychological processes and the polyphony of voices within any individual. The method has proved useful in analyzing historical documents such as diaries and trial transcripts, as well as in a wide range of psychological studies, including interviews with former child soldiers, and video recordings of family therapy sessions.