About the Interpretation of Silence

Abstract

One considers silence as a form of analytic relation, together with speech and gestures. Although the relation between silence and gestures is examined, this article emphasizes the problem of the transference and counter-transference in the silent situation in analysis. The thesis is that silence can be interpreted through the analysis of the counter-transference contents at the same moment. Some examples of silent situations which occurred in the course of different analysis are given. One shows the way in which the analyst’s experiences and phantasies at the same moment (closely related to the daily contact with the patient), despite a superficial aspect of an “acting out” on the part of the analyst, can be dissolved and used in the analytic relation by means of interpretation, both of the content and form. One emphasizes the silent attitude of the patient, in connection with some ideas and phantasies which their own character prevents from being verbalized. Silences “which mean nothing” are pointed out also. This situation too has often to be interpreted in terms of Countertransference experiences. Sometimes there seems to be a touch of “divination” about the interpretation of silence and this makes the patient feel uneasy. The analyst may experience this too, feeling paralyzed and lead to adopt an attitude of expectation not always proper. Through the description of clinical examples, magic-regressive meanings of the silent situation are pointed out, with underlying phantasies of immobilization, of fear of loss of valuable objects of the internal world, of injures inflicted or being inflicted by words, of keeping away (spatially) some ideas that words make “come closer”, of motionless duration in order to delay contact.