Free The Lost Art of Listening by Michael P. Nichols Page A

listener’s filter are the lis-
    tener’s own agenda, preconceived notions and expectations, and defensive
    emotional reactions.
    The Listener’s Own Agenda
    In the summer of 1992, Ariel Dorfman’s play Death and the Maiden , starring
    Glenn Close, Richard Dreyfuss, and Gene Hackman, drew large audiences
    on Broadway. This play of ideas in the guise of a political thriller takes
    place in a country that might be Chile in the immediate aftermath of a
    corrupt dictatorship. The setting is a beach house on the night that the
    lawyer, Gerardo (Richard Dreyfuss), is asked to investigate political crimes
    of the recent past, including the rape of his wife, Paulina (Glenn Close).
    When Roberto Miranda (Gene Hackman) gives her husband a lift home
    after his tire blows out, she recognizes his voice as that of the doctor who
    raped her. Paulina gets a gun and ties the doctor to a chair. But her hus-
    band doesn’t believe her. How could she recognize the man who raped her
    from just his voice? He can’t believe that the good Samaritan who stopped
    to help him on the road could be the evil man who did such terrible things

    How Communication Breaks Down 49
    to his wife. She assures him that she could never forget that voice. Still her
    husband can’t believe her. The play turns on the wife’s desperation and the
    husband’s incredulity. The ending is ambiguous.
    I first heard about Death and the Maiden from a patient who took it as
    an allegory of a husband’s failure to listen to his wife, despite the urgency
    of her appeal. She knew how the woman felt. I replied that as a metaphor
    for misunderstanding the story was one-sided, stressing as it did only the
    husband’s failure to listen, rather than also dealing with the wife’s failure
    to make herself understood. I wasn’t familiar with the play, but I wanted
    my patient to quit blaming her husband for their problems and begin to
    see their communication as a process that took place between them. It
    wasn’t until later that I realized that I was recreating a similar story: a
    woman was trying to tell a man something—in this case that the play was
    profoundly disturbing and that it reminded her of not being listened to by
    her husband—and the man wasn’t listening.
    When I finally got around to reading the play, I responded the same
    way my patient did. It’s a powerful story about a woman desperate for
    understanding and desperately not understood.
    I didn’t listen to my patient with the best of intentions. Oh, I heard
    what she said all right, but I was too eager to teach her a lesson about lis-
    tening to really understand what she was saying—that the play was upset-
    ting and reminded her of her own situation. My response, “Yes, but . . . ,”
    had the effect of making her wrong and me right. Failures of listening often
    take that form.
    To listen well, it’s necessary to let go of what’s on your mind long
    enough to hear what’s on the other person’s. Feigned attentiveness doesn’t
    work.
    Remember Roger, whose friend Derek grew distant after he got mar-
    ried? Roger might have been able to talk to Derek if he’d concentrated
    on saying how he felt, without blaming Derek or forcing him to explain
    himself. If you can express your feelings without trying to compel anything
    from the other person, you’re more likely to get heard—and more likely to
    hear what the other person is feeling.
    For years, Wayne had trouble listening to Janice’s complaining. She
    was always unhappy about something, and he always felt that she expected
    him to do something about it. Therefore, because he felt threatened by her
    50 THE YEARNING TO BE UNDERSTOOD
    complaints, Wayne listened only reluctantly. In fact, when Janice really did
    want Wayne to do something she would make that perfectly clear. The rest
    of the time she just had the sense that he wasn’t interested in her feelings.
    When Janice’s mother developed Parkinson’s, something shifted in
    the