Word And Listening In The Psychotherapeutic Process: How Are They Related?

We all have an internal world, the one we call the psyche. That world that arises in situations in which our attention is not focused on the world but on our internal sensations or ideas and we create fantasies, or we plan our future, we wander about how we would like this or that situation to be, or we suffer fears and anguish of what is, or of what could be and was not. This is the world that the therapist who uses a psychoanalytic orientation invites us to put into play within the clinic.

This highlights the importance of the word, of the symbolic, to build a cure. This means that healing is something that is built in the process of listening. The psyche is a dark labyrinth. And the patient’s word is a kind of light bulb that helps the therapist understand the reason for certain motivations, each word illuminates the path. Each word creates the possibility of a new idea and gives way to a possible way out. Every word creates.

The power of words in therapy

Thinking about it in this way, your role as a patient, consultant or analysand should not be a passive role, waiting for a magical answer to your internal conflicts. Perhaps initially due to the initial uncertainty and confusion you may feel lost and don’t know what to do. But this is where the therapist must generate that space of trust that invites you to let out everything you feel, or think. Helping to create internal connections and search for meanings, meanings, associations that do not let the word remain in a void.

I like to think of my clients as painters, who with their words paint and recreate that internal world, each word opens a new possibility, each word opens the way to a new memory, illuminates a new path, which is sometimes associated with a real or imaginary experience. The therapist’s interventions. From this perspective, the interventions are aimed at helping the patient discover something different that will help them transform their world.

Between the analysand and his analyst, an “Agreement” is created in which one puts that internal world into play, while the other puts his listening into play returning to a previously mentioned idea, we could think that the role of the analyst is not to let the lamp go out to help the analysand navigate that dark world but full of surprises.

The patient’s word is as important as the analyst’s listening. As an analyst, we must leave aside our internal world, since our function is not to transmit ideals or moralisms about how things should be, that is why we do not use the word disorder, because it is It gives the idea that there is a universally correct way to do things. Each word subject is unique and our role is to help you build and navigate your path with your own tools.

If the analyst does not silence the voices of his internal world, that is, if he allows his prejudices or his beliefs or even his theories to come into play, he runs the risk of ending up becoming a counselor. And the sessions will become simple conversations. Full of empty and meaningless words.

It is very particular and interesting to think that many people go to the analyst looking for advice and sometimes yes, we give some recommendation, but not without first listening, asking, questioning. Each case is always singular, unique, there are no universalities. The analyst is not a counselor, who attempts, based on an ideal, to tell the analysand how he or she should live. But he does invite you to shake off what makes you unhappy about living to put together or paint your own picture.

Someone who arrives for consultation, when he arrives by himself, and not referred by another, as in the case of the child, who is taken by the parents or referred by the school. It comes because he has had an experience of emptiness, he suffers from something that he does not know, how to symbolize, he cannot find how to give it meaning and he looks for a way to do it. They usually say things like, “I don’t know what to say, I don’t know where to start.” My response is usually, “Say whatever comes to mind however it comes to mind.” No matter how you say it, you’re going to get it right.