Listening and Learning

I think most humanly creative moments arrive unannounced; they are outside the control of our rational minds and are the product of our imagination and our unconscious. The task of our rational faculties is to evaluate and interrogate.

Nowadays we are bombarded daily with information from all parts of the globe. One summation of the predicament is: We know more but we think less. In constructing this module for the EPI, I began with the hypothesis that in our educational systems too much time is dedicated to accumulating information and following other people’s minds, and too little time is spent listening to what we hear internally. How long is it acceptable to mull over something? What is involved in “making up your own mind?” What groundwork needs to be done before you can claim to think for yourself?

I am organising a group of interested people to explore these issues. The group of fifteen will meet once a week for four weeks. Each meeting lasts 80 minutes. At the first meeting I will speak for 40 minutes. It will not be an academic paper and my presentation will include prose, poetry, music and silence.

During the second 40 minutes all members are free to speak but are asked to refrain from asking for clarification or elaboration from the speaker. The general ethos governing this part is similar to the process of a Quaker meeting: anyone so moved may speak; they speak to express themselves; they speak to the whole meeting; silence is an acceptable response.

In the time immediately after the meeting and in the week until the next meeting all participants are asked not to enter into conversation with anyone, either inside or outside the group about the meeting. The reasoning behind this is that I believe we often give away good ideas before they have time to germinate in our own mind.

To enable everyone to hold on to such thoughts and to listen for them there is some ‘homework’. You are asked to do two things: firstly to keep a diary to allow a conversation with yourself about any thoughts you have about the experience, and secondly to write free-associatively for at least ten minutes during the week. Free-associative writing involves writing whatever comes to your mind no matter what it is. It is best done without stopping and thinking. Just let the pen or keyboard have a life of its own. Do not worry about grammar, punctuation, order or sense. Once written, do not re-read it. Turn the page or close the document.  You can do more than ten minutes in the week if you wish.

Sleeping and dreaming are fundamental to learning. Some say that in order to know something well you have to teach it. I would add that you need to sleep on it and dream on it.

In the time between the first and second meeting I will devote a number of hours to assembling some thoughts for the second meeting and will present a second paper which will also last 40 minutes. I will use my experience of the second part of the first meeting as my starting point. I will not summarise the responses of the participants or order them into any coherent form.

When we assemble a week later for the second meeting you are asked not to bring your diary or your free-associative writing. Instead you are encouraged to listen to the presentation. Again there will be forty minutes for talking.

This pattern will be repeated twice: in other words there will be three presentations and three periods to talk.

The fourth and final meeting will be a review and evaluation of the process we have been involved in. In the days before the final meeting all participants are asked to read their diaries and their free-associative writing.

The meetings are experimental in the sense that to my knowledge nothing of this nature has been tried before. Leading such a group and undertaking to write papers in the manner outlined is experimental for me: I have not done anything like this before. Also a number of features as outlined above (keeping a diary and free writing in this context; refraining from discussing the group with anyone else) are to my knowledge, novel. The final review meeting will be similar to what takes place at the end of most modules in the EPI: there is a process of evaluation and feedback.

It is essential if you sign up that you attend all meetings. You also need to always be on time and not come into the meeting if you arrive late. During my presentations you are asked not to take any notes. This is not a therapy group.

There are 15 places.

When: Wed. 8.00 p.m. to 9.20 p.m. 10 June; 17 June; 24 June; 1 July 2009.

Where: SIP 5 Penshurst St Willoughby.

Cost: $176 ($160 + $16 GST)

Maurice Whelan is a psychoanalyst and writer. His original studies were in philosophy, theology and sociology. He worked for many years as a social worker. He was a visiting academic lecturer and clinical supervisor at the Tavistock Clinic in London. Since 1992 he has lived and worked in Sydney. The subjects of his three non-fiction books are education, psychoanalysis and literature.  His first novel Boat People was published in March 2008. His first book of poems will be published in April 2009.