Starting from the experience with infirmary patients in a school-hospital, from the status-quo of psychologist’s work in general hospitals’ infirmaries and from literature about psychoanalysis in hospitals, this work is focused in a specific question: the psychoanalytic hearing in infirmaries and the implication of its practice with the analyst’s desire. We intervied fifteen hospital psychologists who declared psychoanalytic affiliation and had at least a two year experience in hospitals and work in infirmaries. We use psychoanalytic hearing to do “open”, semi-structured interviews. The data were analyzed under a psichoanalytical (Freudian- Lacanian) framework, and we could identify a strong interaction between the supposed hospital environment difficulties to the psychoanalytical work and some personal and training aspects, and we find that these interactions are linked to the working attitude adopted in the hospital. Our research reinforces the possibility of making use of psychoanalytic hearing in the work with infirmary patients, which is linked to unconscious manifestations along patient’s speech, and in which the therapy direction is the emergence of unconscious subject.
Hospital Psychology; Psychoanalytic hearing; Psychoanalysis, General hospital; Analyst’s desire