In Defense of Listening

This paper makes a case for listening and its role in establishing and maintaining meaningful psychotherapeutic relationships. Further, it examines those factors that have contributed to the devaluation and current decline of listening in mental health care. These factors include the abuses of managed care, the marketing and misuse of psychotropic medications, the growth of brief, manualized, empirically supported treatments (ESTs), and the lack of appreciation for unconscious processes and countertransference in the appeal, development and delivery of these interventions.