most men had rather say a smart thing than do a good one.

Today the topic of discussion (aside from last night's article and the syllabus/grading criteria for the semester) was autobiographical responses vs. empathic listening.

Before engaging in autobiographical responses (APIE), one must first evaluate the dynamics of the situation. When you're in a situation where there are low levels of trust (perhaps someone has a deficit in their Personal Bank Account) and high levels of emotion (this sort of situation is sometimes colloquially referred to as "facing off"), you really don't want to start throwing APIE in their face (get it? APIE? A PIE? Oh whatever). The four autobiographical responses contained in APIE are as follows:

Advise: ("I know exactly what how you feel. This one time, I got stood up by my partner for the trapeze act, but it was all right because I had this solution using only the torch from the fire eaters' act and picking the lock on the tiger cage..." etc.)
Probe: ("Why did they fire you from the Karl Marx Center for Disenfranchised Youth again?")
Interpret: ("Well, according to the basic Jungian archetypes, I'd say Hank is definitely in touch with his anima...)
Evaluate: ("You're weird.")

In the aforementioned situation (Trust:Low/Emotion:High), you're going to want to engage instead in empathic listening. This involves the defenestration of your own agenda in order to best understand the "what is" of the other person's situation/viewpoint, etc. You've got to get rid of your own biases, don't form judgements on the other peopson, just listen to what you're saying. Inconvenience youself (as discussed in the article).

personal application:
I will admit, I'm not very good at any form of listening. Most of the time, I'm not really on any of the steps as illustrated in class. I'm attention-defecit and will often find myself snapping back to reality to see someone talking to me and I have no idea what is going on. Sometimes I don't even know who they are or who they came from. It's very disconcerting. And I'm not even ignoring them, because I didn't know they were taking to me in the first place, and I'm not pretend listening because I don't feel any obligation to pretend to listen to a conversation when I'm not even aware of a. my supposed participation in it and b. whatever else I was doing before this happened (thinking, though I can never quite remember what about).

Sorry, I'm sure this isn't what we're supposed to write, but I don't know what I was thinking about when the bases of discussion were covered. I must have been way out in left field.