Between Silence and Words: the Therapeutic Dimension of Quiet

Abstract

Current relational models favor active engagement and mutual exploration. But for particular patients and in particular phases of work with most patients, coconstructed inquiry cannot be tolerated or used. A setting that permits nonpurposive reverie in which contact is neither sought nor avoided is needed. The British independent tradition of valuing quiet and the capacity to be alone offers a refinement of interpersonal interaction. Living a quiet experience with the analyst is a step towards learning to be alone just as aloneness is a precondition for sophisticated relatedness. I draw on the creative imaginations of Winnicott, Milner, Eigen, and Bollas to show how a deep listening to these developmental dimensions elicit our most alive and authentic selves.

Keywords:

• quiet
• aloneness
• reverie
• aliveness
• silence
• interaction

Notes

¹ Heaney kept in his notebook a quote from French philosopher Gaston Bachelard: “What is the source of our first suffering? It lies in the fact that we hesitated to speak. It was born in the moment we accumulated silent things within us” (Clines, 1983; Heaney, 2002, p. 400).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Suzanne Little

Suzanne Little, Ph.D., is supervisor of psychotherapy, William Alanson White Institute; past president, White Psychoanalytic Society, and a member of the Editorial Board of Contemporary Psychoanalysis since 2006. She is assistant professor of psychiatry, Carl Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and has a private practice in downtown New York.