Types of Interviews, Types of Listening

Abstract

The process of gathering data in a psychiatric interview can be conceptualized on three levels: gathering facts, assessing the significance of facts (and the distortion of facts), and developments in the relationship between interviewer and subject as it unfolds during the course of the interview. Within the latter process, both facts and nonfacts possess “transactional” significance that may be engaged through a process of “stratified listening” consisting of listening for facts, monitoring affect, and listening for inconsistencies and omissions.