“…to move from not knowing to knowing requires we must necessarily transit through a period which will involve uncertainty, frustration and anxiety, and this uncertainty inevitably carries risk”.

Oh yes!  Silences can be awkward and even persecutory. But it can also be agents allowing moments of great insight and realization!  In psychotherapy silence can often be misunderstood as a lack of intervention or that “nothing is happening”. Yet, for Psychoanalytic Psychotherapists, it is often regarded as moments that may create reflective space, deepen the transference, and honour analytic principles.

It can be said that silence is not the absence of communication but a form of communication in its own right.  This was echoed by Acheson and Avdi who wrote that “silence should be considered a container of words.”  May it hold the words we cannot speak?  The thoughts we dare not release from the mental rooms in our minds, locked, not accessible to any – not even to oneself?

It is Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist’s task, not to fill the silence but to listen into it and to try and sense what is being communicated through it – what is not said.    The French analyst Jean Laplanche observed that silence “makes space for the enigmatic message of the other”.  I am then reminded as Freud stated that while listening to patients during sessions that “it was only necessary for the physician (psychologist) to go a step further in order to guess the material which was concealed from the patient himself and (for the psychologist) to be able to communicate it to him”.  Silence, then, becomes a precondition for the analytic stance of listening with “evenly suspended attention” and “to move from not knowing to knowing.

Yes, for some patients, silence may feel persecutory or as if the therapist may be neglecting them. For others, it becomes a moment of profound containment, realization and insight.  More than a pause, silence is part of psychotherapy that allows the patient to encounter their own psychic life in the presence of another.   Often silence allows patients to experience their own internal world without immediate interference of others or the external environment. When the analyst refrains from commenting or interpreting too quickly, they invite unconscious material — fears, wishes, resistances — to emerge and to be brought into the psychotherapy.

“…to move from not knowing to knowing requires we must necessarily transit through a period which will involve uncertainty, frustration and anxiety, and this uncertainty inevitably carries risk”.

Oh yes!  Silences can be awkward and even persecutory. But it can also be agents allowing moments of great insight and realization!  In psychotherapy silence can often be misunderstood as a lack of intervention or that “nothing is happening”. Yet, for Psychoanalytic Psychotherapists, it is often regarded as moments that may create reflective space, deepen the transference, and honour analytic principles.

It can be said that silence is not the absence of communication but a form of communication in its own right.  This was echoed by Acheson and Avdi who wrote that “silence should be considered a container of words.”  May it hold the words we cannot speak?  The thoughts we dare not release from the mental rooms in our minds, locked, not accessible to any – not even to oneself?

It is Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist’s task, not to fill the silence but to listen into it and to try and sense what is being communicated through it – what is not said.    The French analyst Jean Laplanche observed that silence “makes space for the enigmatic message of the other”.  I am then reminded as Freud stated that while listening to patients during sessions that “it was only necessary for the physician (psychologist) to go a step further in order to guess the material which was concealed from the patient himself and (for the psychologist) to be able to communicate it to him”.  Silence, then, becomes a precondition for the analytic stance of listening with “evenly suspended attention” and “to move from not knowing to knowing.

Yes, for some patients, silence may feel persecutory or as if the therapist may be neglecting them. For others, it becomes a moment of profound containment, realization and insight.  More than a pause, silence is part of psychotherapy that allows the patient to encounter their own psychic life in the presence of another.   Often silence allows patients to experience their own internal world without immediate interference of others or the external environment. When the analyst refrains from commenting or interpreting too quickly, they invite unconscious material — fears, wishes, resistances — to emerge and to be brought into the psychotherapy.

I am again reminded of Freud saying that the therapist’s greatest speech is sometimes his silence.  Silences are then transformed into a moment of active communication between the patient and the therapist, and it is the psychologist’s task not to fill the silence but to listen into it: to sense what is being communicated through it and to interpret or respond only when necessary.

References:

1. Acheson, M. & Avdi, E. (2020). Exploring Silence in Psychoanalytic Theory and Clinical Work. University College London. https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10088859

2. Freud, S. (1912). The Dynamics of Transference. Standard Edition, 12: 97–108.

3. Gill, M., & Schafer, R. (1964). The Analysis of Transference. International Universities Press.

4. Freud, S. (1912). Recommendations to Physicians Practising Psycho-Analysis. Standard Edition, 12: 109–120.

5. Laplanche, J., & Pontalis, J.-B. (1973). The Language of Psycho-Analysis. London: Karnac.

6. Laplanche, J. (1999). Essays on Otherness. London: Routledge.

7.Bibby, T. 2009. “How Do Children Understand Themselves as Learners? Towards a Learner-centred Understanding of Pedagogy.” Pedagogy, Culture and Society 17 (1): 41–45. doi:10.1080/14681360902742852.