perceptive listening Quotes

Individual psychotherapy - that is, engaging a distressed fellow human in a disciplined conversation and human relationship - requires that the therapist have the proper temperament and philosophy of life for such work. By that I mean that the therapist must be patient, modest, and a perceptive listener, rather than a talker and advice-giver.

'In empathic listening you listen with your ears, but you also, and more importantly, listen with you eyes and with your heart. You listen for feeling, for meaning. You listen for behaviour. You use your right brain as well as your left. You sense, you intuit, you feel.' ... 'You have to open yourself up to be influenced'.

It is the way to educate your eye and more. Stare, pry, listen, eavesdrop.

The reality of the other person is not in what he reveals to you, but in what he cannot reveal to you. Therefore, if you would understand him, listen not to what he says but rather to what he does not say.

And she looked at me like she couldn't believe I knew she loved Anne Rice. I guess he didn't know how much she talked or how much I listened.

His ear heard more than what was said to him, and his slow speech had overtones not of thought, but of understanding beyond thought.

Practice really hearing what people say. Do your best to get inside their mind.

Listening doesn't mean trying to understand. Anything, however trifling, may be of use one day. What matters is to know something that others don't know you know.

I had to grow up and learn to listen for the unspoken as well as the spoken-and to know a truth.

One of the things that Ivar knew about Mrs. Walker was that she would only tell him what she knew if he asked the right question, so he spent a portion of his time meditating over what he might ask Mrs. Walker and how he might phrase the question.