In Praise of Listening: A Psychiatrist’s Plea for Our Political Moment

In Praise of Listening: A Psychiatrist’s Plea for Our Political Moment

While New Yorkers are attributing Zohran Mamdani’s surprising primary victory to his “listening” to voters, dozens of members of The Center for Mind-Body Medicine’s (CMBM) Gaza trauma-healing team have been telling me that listening has saved their lives.  As a psychiatrist deeply committed to Freud’s “talking cure” and to the listening — the respectful, empathic, non-judgmental attention that is central to it — I was hopeful, but also saddened.…