I will attempt to say something on the way in which I listen, as a psychoanalyst, the analysand. Let us assume that he says, in a more or less lucid context, the words I am afraid. Initially I will refer on how I do not listen to those words : I refrain from any effort to understand, if «understand» means «reduce, refer, link, associate, relate, explain etc.». Furthermore I refrain from any kind of disposition to feel any «compassion», to «empathize» with him. And in time, it occurs even more scarcely for me to be touched by his words. I listen to the I am afraid without contemplating and without feelings.

Usually the I am afraid says nothing at first. Let us look closer to the expression: it says nothing. It is this that our language, as such, indicates, that the I am afraid itself may say somethig or it may say nothing. This is entirely different to that we ourselves pose in statements about the fear of the analysand guided by his case history, by our feelings, by our associations, by the relevant literature. If in fact we would give trust to our language, we would realize this peculiar difference, and by refraining, not pretentiously but sincerely, from our own contemplations and feelings, we could, at last, halt to the I am afraid of the analysand, remain to this and endure that for a while, for a short time or maybe for months and years, it says nothing, either to me or to him.

I trust the language. I remain by the words, their silence and their talking, free from contemplations and feelings, in a way floating. From this, from the attention given to the words themselves and to their offered or withdrawn Logos, I understand the attitude suggested by Sigmund Freud to the psychoanalyst, which he names in the almost poetically abundant expression «freischwebende Aufmeksamkeit», «free floating attention».

The words, as, such mostly say nothing. The peculiar silence of the words, for example of the I am afraid in a psychoanalytic session, usually cannot be withstood. We, the inpatient, are prone to disregard it. The nothing, which the words I am afraid say, is buried deep, and the fear, isolated from its silence, is being represented, as much by the ailing as by the therapist, in conditions of behaviour as a mere symptom that now needs to be given a «meaning», to be given an «interpretation», that is, to be reduced to his conscious and unconscious experiences and to be related to them.

The silence of the words... It is so alien, but still so familiar to us, since most of the things we come across, most of the words we say and we listen to, if we look closer,they say nothing as such! But merely we use this expression mostly in a resistant tone. What says nothing, we tend to undervalue and reject it. Yet the silence may even be dear to us. Dear silences of the moon. This is a verse from the poet Giorgos Seferis in the poem «Last station».

The silence of the words, that many words for some time may say nothing, opens up the area where psychoanalysis takes its course. The silence of the words needs to become dear. Because, in its innermost the no-more of the past and the not-yet of the forthcomings are kept, and they are waiting for their time to reveal themselves, as such, rendering the analysand to his historicity. The reason for which in psychoanalysis the psychoanalyst mostly keeps silent, is exactly because he submits, and replies to the silence of the words. In this sense he remains silent, even when he speaks.

There may be a time when a word, the I am afraid, unexpectedly comes to speak to us, to say something, either to me or to the analysand, it does not matter. What the words say has nothing to do with the how or the when, with whom or what the analysand is afraid of. The I am afraid itself comes to say something. The Logos of the words is being heard within an experience which I would call emotion, taken literally, released from any sentimentality, as e-motion.

With the coming of the emotion things do change. Where feelings and representations and associations prevailed, bridges had to be constructed linking up the symptom I am afraid to the case history of the analysand, to his relationship with me etc., bridges linking up my so-called «countertransference» to his fear, and determining my «interpretations». When, however, the I am afraid comes to speak, to move, no bridge is needed since we are from the very beginning together, together in the Logos of the words.

Giorgos Seferis says: The poet writes with his living body. I understand this phrase in the context of the meaning of the emotion as discussed above, and I would say respectively that the psychoanalyst speaks - with his living body. In the psychoanalytic communion I await for the words to speak to me. When this does not happen, I keep silent. When it does happen, I let myself to the emotion of that hour and I listen to it. It is this emotion that determines my attitude and dictates my talking, and this not only concerning the content of my words, but also the tone, the rhythm, the colouring of the voice by which it will be said what has to be said. And my words’ sole purpose is to enhance, for both of us, the «something» which the words, for example the I am afraid, say. And when my words are blissfully found in harmony with the emotion, which in an enigmatic way always moves both of us, they will be certainly heard, because they are no longer my personal words, but replies to the common calling coming upon us at that hour.

When the I am afraid comes to say something, itself changes. Rather it does not change at all. On the contrary it is as it is said now for the first time. It is said, and reveals itself as such in an unprecedent lucidity, it becomes tangible, and I see my analysand, who is afraid, I see him ,as such, for the first time, I commune with him sincerely. The I am afraid, so frequently said, only now becomes a name. A few days ago a woman said to me: In psychoanalysis I was able to clear up my thoughts to various things I already knew, I was able to give them a name.

When the I am afraid comes to say something, it says above all its own word. Now, however, the word is not a significative , a label on the signified. Previously, the I am afraid was actually a signifying word. Now it is what Martin Heidegger discerned in his studies on Hoelderlin: a naming word. It says, and it names - itself.

The I am afraid, which we previously considered, according to the words of my analysand as known, dissolves into a polyphony. The one being afraid discerns voices, my voice, voices from his past, voices from the forthcomings. The fear is revealed, and along with is concealed, within the non-appearing harmony (Heraclitus), that is, within the unspoken collection, that is, within the Logos of this polyphony. The fear, this isolated «symptom», alters, and along with alters, also, the one being afraid, since the I am afraid unfolds into the world wherein he abides, which is finally the common world wherein we abide, because it is constituted by Logos as the primordial collection in the sense of the non-appearing harmony.

The course of the therapy in psychoanalysis is the course along which the Logos, and not an aetio-logy, of the word is being heard by both of us, ever more decisively, in the collection of its world, and becomes talken. Nevertheless, within this collection also belongs the silence of the word, which is not abolished by the occuring name, but actually, now, it comes to its core essentiation and it follows lovingly and latently the common abidance of man in Logos.

I attempted to say something on the way in which I think of psychoanalysis as a route through the affections of Logos. The horizon of this thinking is defined by the fragment of Heraclitus which is quoted in the title of my speech: NOT TO ME YET TO THE LOGOS LISTEN AND HOMOLOGATE... I will recapitulate what I have said following his saying closely.

- LISTEN: All begins for man by a listening, that is, all begins by a telling, which tell us something, and by telling, it collects us in the Logos, that is, it calls upon us for a reply. Whatever concerns us, it does so as a listening. Yet the true listening is always also a calling.

- NOT TO ME YET TO THE LOGOS: The original listening does not concern a calling which derives from me, from you, that is, from what Heraclitus names elsewhere ΙΔΙΑ ΦΡΟΝΗΣΙΣ, ONE’S OWN THINKING. The original listening listens to the calling of the Logos itself, and this comes from somewhere else. Here is the place for the truly common world.

-HOMOLOGATE: The human Logos is a listening and a reply on the calling of the Logos, is its e-motion and homo-logation. The particularity of man consists in that man is man, as far as he has been assigned the homologation of the Logos, the reply to what calls upon him.

Through this homo- of the HOMOLOGATE, Logos is revealed as the primordial, without «why» and «how» existing, collection, thanks to which we, by homologating it, speak. For that reason our talking is always and from the very beginning a communion. In a distant dialogue with Heraclitus, a verse by Hoelderlin says: A communion we are and do hear we from one another.

The psychoanalytic communion is a mutual listening, a co-hearing of the Logos, which each time calls upon the analysand and drives us both to its homologation. The psychoanalyst does not listen to the analysand. He listens from the analysand the saying of the words and, with his craft, he offers him the possibility to give it a hearing, that is, after a verse by Pindar: to learn and to become the one he is (P2, 72).