"How many of of today’s complaints about doctors stem from doctors not listening? Listening is central to learning about and coming to understand a sufferer, and those steps are crucial to being a healer. The healer learns about the sufferer in direct proportion to the quantity and quality of his [or her] listening."

Thus concludes Stanley W. Jackson, M.D., in his Benjamin Rush Award Lecture at the annual convention of the American Psychiatric Association. Dr. Jackson, a professor in the department of psychiatry at the Yale University School of Medicine, surveyed the history of both the neglect of and attention to the value of listening in the field of medicine. The value of sight as a means of gathering data, of looking at the patient to assemble the necessary facts for an accurate diagnosis, has increased over the been a central tenent of medicine since its inception. Much progress in the knowledge of disease and its cure has come from observation. Our word, "insight" expresses the respect we have for the power of seeing in yielding new information and understanding. The emphasis upon vision has over time as scientific medicine has developed even more sophisticated imaging techniques, from the microscope to C.A.T. scans. Yet there is a power to listening peculiarly its own.

The value of listening generally celebrates 1900 as its birthday. That was when Freud introduced psychoanalysis and the "talking cure." Freud noted the special quality of attention needed by the psychotherapist, a special quality of listening that used more than just the ears. One of Freud’s follower’s, Theodore Reik introduced the term, "listening with the third ear" to suggest the intuitive dimension of healing by listening This mode of listening suggests a special link, even a psychic or spiritual connection between doctor and patient. Indeed, vision is valued because of its ability to help us perceive distinctions. When we look at another person with our eyes, we see them as separate, but when we close our eyes and listen deeply, we become one with the person. While vision has the quality of inducing detached, objective observation, listening has its own power, even as it unites patient and doctor in shared communion or empathy.

Such intense, intimate listening frightens many doctors. In the past quarter century, many explorers in the field of psychotherapy have explored how the therapist’s own self is called into play more crucially when deep listening is employed. What would seem to be the therapist’s inner subjective response tot he patient comes to have connective meaning for the patient.

What makes listening so healing? When the doctor listens, the patient feels less alone, feels heard, feels that the suffering has a place to transpire, outside of self alone, and thus feels unburdened. Thus the cathartic value.

Dr. Jackson traces the power of listening to the power of prayer, quoting passages from Psalms that point to our need for God to listen to us in prayer: God to listen to us in prayer:

"Hear my prayer, O Lord, and let my cry come unto thee... incline thine ear unto me" (Psalm, 102: 1-2)

"Lord, hear my voice: let thine ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications" (Psalm, 130: 2).

"Lord, I cry unto thee: make haste unto me; give ear unto my voice, when I cry unto thee" (Psalm, 141: 1)

"Attend to my cry; for I am brought very low." (Psalm, 142: 6).

These passages point to the image of a "God of listening." who responds to our need to be seen and heard, known, confirmed, appreciated, recognized, or identified. Very simply, it is "the yearning for witnessed significance."

We might note that the value of the psychic reading, such as that provided by Edgar Cayce, takes on some of its healing power, not to mention its informational value, from the obviously deep resonance, or oneness, Cayce was able to create in his attunement to the spiritual nature of the seeker. In our current training on the Intuitive Heart™ method of healing, we emphasize the ability to listen deeply, attuning oneself to the sound of a person’s voice, which--a mokment that can be a healing experience for both.

Source: "The listening healer in the history of psychological healing." The American Journal of Psychiatry, December, 1992, Vol. 149, No. 12, pp. 1623-1632. Digest by Henry Reed