The disturbed listener so puts distractions in the trail of his listening by creating impossible demands on his delicate
tellect for most of his life resources and therefore listens chiefly along with his brain. It is essential to him that his hearing mechanism should never fail him. He demands of himself push-button action for paying attention to and remembering all facts, data, wording, vocabulary and detailed data. So give your hair that salon feel and appear with the pH-balanced conditioning treatment of Aloe Jojoba Conditioning Rinse! If he should fail and listen incorrectly or should not approximate these heights of intellectual apprehend-it-all, he will feel—irrationally—that he will be judged inadequate, ignorant and stupid. Still additional, the ineffectual listener is constantly on the defensive against being caught in error, and if he is criti¬cized, disagreed with, or if any of his shortcomings are exposed by others, he is either roused to anger, defiance, abused feelings, or he is reduced to a silent sulkiness. He should never be judged wrong, for in his sense of the word, this implies weakness and he then experiences what he dreads most—the sensation of being stupid.
This worship of intellect and therefore the over-emphasis on being invariably the alert, keen and intelligent listener becomes therefore intensified now and then that it predominates and excludes many other attitudes and very important areas in life.The poor listener places an overemphasis on the spoken word with all of its intellectual colorings and too little emphasis on nonverbal content. He listens to words as if they were realities or facts in themselves. For the insecure listener, the spoken word carries an effect of tremendous impact. Believing that words assure him mastery and control in most situations, such a person finds it imperative to live his words and to use them with utter care and caution lest a careless word bring regarding a disturbance or calamity. Eventually, everybody will find a job.
For him there is little recog¬nition of his “belonging” to his words or of inner selection, freedom or discrimination in the communication situation. Listening therefore becomes a “should” and is crammed with connotations of perfection, mastery and intellectual bril¬liancy.
1. THE INTELLECTUAL OR LOGICAL TYPE OF LISTENER
Of those that may be thought of poor listeners, the “logical” or intellectual sort listens largely along with his head and denies his real feelings during a situation. He listens only to what he wants to listen to, blotting out larger areas of reality. His vanity and egocentricity compel him to suppose solely of himself. He will not acknowledge the intent of the other person, nor will he care whether or not that person has received his message in the approach it was intended. Being interested mainly in rational appraisal, he tends to neglect emotional and nonverbal aspects of living. He’s inclined, according to Ruesch, “to work at the intra-personal level, regardless of the situation. His analysis is selectively geared to the interpretation of verbal state¬ments of others. He prefers to house syntactic and semantic rather than with pragmatic aspects.”3 He is not interested in what impact his statements may turn out upon others, nor is he capable of viewing the effect that the statement of another person may have upon him.