Listening as a Relational and Experientialist Praxis: Insights from Gestalt Therapy

ABSTRACT

Humanistic psychology is grounded in dialogic communication and existentialist phenomenology, involving a relational philosophy and experientialist methodology. Its relative neglect within listening research is canvased before exploring the praxis of Gestalt therapy – a humanistic psychotherapy – which models integration of philosophy, theory, and practice relevant to listening. While listening research is increasingly attuned to relational aspects of communication and elements of humanistic therapies, it remains shaped by a metaphysics of atomization, compromising its capacity for integrated praxis. The value of conceptualizing listening as a praxis similar to that of Gestalt therapy is therefore elucidated, with particular reference to listening pedagogy in higher education.

Notes

¹ Recent sociocognitive research confirms that lay understandings of listening also tend to be holistic, suggesting a correlation of philosophical and “common sense” perceptions (Lipetz et al., 2018).

² Spurned as too individualistic and psychologized by scholars with sociological leanings and insufficiently evidence-based by researchers in more psychologized fields, humanistic psychology has thus flourished as a praxis but struggled to legitimize its insights in more scholarly settings. However, the discoveries of neuroscience are now changing this, by lending considerable empirical support to the claims of humanistic psychology (Brown et al., 2008; Motschnig-Pitrik & Lux, 2008; Spagnuolo Lobb, 2018).

³ An example of Rogers’ limitations in this regard is his 1955 essay “Persons or Science? A Philosophical Question”, about differences between therapeutic and scientific epistemologies. While it is an eloquent exploration of essentially phenomenological questions about the relationship between the objective world and subjective experience and suggests that a dialectical approach is useful for navigating between the two, it is devoid of references to philosophical work that could have helped to clarify his meaning.

⁴ Buber also used the terms “confirmation” and “inclusion”, while Rogers used “acceptance” and “empathy” to cover similar ground; their filmed dialogue of 1957 explored the nuances of their respective usage (Cissna & Anderson, 2002).