Erich Fromm's 6 rules of listening should be known by everyone

"Most people listen not to understand, but to answer", wrote Stephen R. Covey.

See, I do that a lot. Wait for my input while he or she tells me about the horse or her life. That of course not even a quarter is as interesting as everything that happens between waking up and going to bed (which, to be honest, is usually quite straightforward).

But why say anything at all if no one understands?

It's like blind people talking to the sign language of the deaf. Or a psychiatric inmate with a spoon in his ear on the phone all day long. It doesn't do much good.

Good thing it doesn't have to stay that way. We can learn to listen. And even benefit from it if this effort remains a one-sided one. Things get easier when we understand other people. "To understand everything means to forgive everything," they say.

The great philosopher and psychologist Erich Fromm (1900-1980) held a seminar in Switzerland in 1974, which, after his death, appeared as a book called Von der Kunst des Zuhörtens. For him, listening is an art like understanding poetry, with its own rules and norms.

After five decades as a practicing psychotherapist, he recommends that all people practice six things to master this art - the art of selfless understanding.

1. The basic rule for this art is the total concentration of the listener.
2. Nothing important should occupy his mind meanwhile, ideally he is free of fear and greed at this moment.
3. He needs great imagination and can express it in words.
4. He should have empathy for others and be strong enough to feel each other's experience as if it were his own.
5. The ability to have such empathy is an important part of the ability to love. Understanding another person means loving him - not in an erotic sense, but in that of reaching out to him or her and overcoming the fear of losing oneself in the process.
6. Understanding and loving are inseparable. If they are separated, the gate remains closed to understand each other deeply.

How do you feel about that ?

I wish you a happy new year.

Kind regards,

@journalisme

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