Part II

Introduction to Part II

Now that we have resolved those most fundamental questions about silence in the first part of the book, we turn to psychoanalysis. The questions, hopefully, remain the same: is silence in the psychoanalytic process natural to it, or is it just a side-effect? Should we try to deal with it – avoid it, fight it, enjoy it? – somehow, or is it simply to be highly valued and nourished? Is silence only a break in the psychoanalytic session or a message of a kind, sometimes possibly even the most profound one? Should the practitioners of what is called “the talking cure” encourage patients to develop their capacity to be silent? And will that change the name of their profession into the “being-silent-together cure”?

The clinical part of the book opens, in analogy to the previous one, with phenomenology. We decided to reprint the 2006 paper by Elsa Ronningstam, possibly the best known and frequently quoted paper on silence in psychoanalysis in the last 20 years. It offers an overview of the cross-cultural meanings of silence and a review of psychoanalytic literature on silence, yet its central part is a detailed case presentation, and we hope that this will provide an inspiring overture to all subsequent chapters.

The next chapter brings Salman Akhtar’s classification of the types of silence in the psychoanalytic setting, enriched with two clinical vignettes. Akhtar distinguishes between the following: structural silence, unmentalised silence, defensive silence, enactive silence, symbolic silence, contemplative silence, regenerative silence, and blank silence. We hope that this will both help practitioners and inspire parallels with classifications based on empirical psychotherapy research.

Aleksandar Dimitrijević writes about the topics that, especially in the first several decades of the development of psychoanalysis, was seen as an equation—silence as the manifestation of resistance. His review of classic papers on the topic is organized into three parts: he discusses silence as a possible manifestation of resistance in the patient, in countertransference, and as an intersubjective phenomenon, offering clinical illustrations for many of his points.

The topic of the chapter that follows is almost the opposite of Dimitrijević’s. Standing on the shoulders of Ferenczi and the Independents, as well as Norbert Freedman, Jay Frankel writes about all things good that silence in psychoanalysis can bring. Frankel elaborates creatively on the ideas such as silent holding or the necessity of silence for self-reflection and symbolizing, but he also introduces notions such as renegotiating internalized object relations and his innovative idea of “the analytic state of consciousness.”

Margaret Boyle Spelman, the author of two books and co-editor of another one Winnicott, focuses here only on silence in the oeuvre of this pediatrician-psychoanalyst. Infants are, of course, often silent and never verbal, so it is not surprising that Winnicott’s developmental theory emphasized the importance of this phenomenon. The chapter discusses developmental aspects, as well as silence and growth. Also interesting is the elaboration of the idea that silence can be counted among potential transitional objects. There are also more direct clinical contributions, such as the ideas of the silent holding between the analyst and patient, or the idea of the silent self, which are only going to prove that Winnicott never ceases to inspire.

Howard Levine has written a chapter about the psychology of the analyst (and we always lack those) focused on silence. Apart from his explorations of Bion (specifically, the ideas of reverie and negative capability), Levine mostly deals with the (non-Lacanian) French psychoanalytic tradition, particularly Green, and sees Freud as the foundation for them all. He acknowledges the other possible roles of silence in the psychoanalytic setting, most of which are thoroughly discussed in previous chapters, and focuses on the notion of silence as a condition for analytic listening.

The part closes with a chapter entirely devoted to the concept of silencing—an active and deliberate attempt to make it impossible for a person or group to articulate her voice and, thus, identity. Aleksandar Dimitrijević writes about the role of this malignant mechanism in transforming trauma into a mental disorder. Silencing is here explored on three levels: first, in the domain of attachment trauma, then as the conspiracy of silence on a group level, and finally in psychoanalysis itself, mostly when it comes to education but also with the concern that treatments can sometimes be retraumatizing. The reviewed empirical evidence shows that 1) traumatic experiences can be overcome when recognized and acknowledged, 2) they are predictive of mental disorders when, in the case of abused children, caregivers behave as if nothing happened or actively prevent the child from expressing her story and her feelings.

This whole part is, however, only one side of the story. The research part that follows is complementary to it, and the two of them should be read together, as two ways of listening to the same composition. Being able to hear both will, we hope, be enriching.