The concept of social telephony was introduced at the European symposium “Families on the Line: Telephone Services in Question,” organized by the National Federation of Schools for Parents and Educators (FNEPE) in 1991 (Chauvière, M., & Frotiée, B. “Social Telephony: Sociological Perspectives.” Revue française des affaires sociales 1998; 2: 168). The proceedings of this conference were published in the Fnepe journal, Le Groupe Familial 1992; 136: 29–125. The bibliography on social telephone services is necessarily multi-thematic. Thus, after defining terms such as listening, the listening relationship, or counseling, we approached social telephone services from sociological, psychological, and economic perspectives (general overview), then focused on profiling the caller (Who is talking about what? A study of callers) and finally, in the section titled “Who answers?”, we identified publications focused on the role of the listener and available training programs.[article excerpt]