Listening in the Dark: A Response to “Noise and Silence in Analytic Talk”

Abstract

The author offers a counterpoint to Dr. Lemert's cosmic musings on the nature and meaning of silent dread in psychoanalytic discourse. Grounded in contemporary interpersonal thinking, this article attributes the patient's anxious speechless state to a dissociative process brought on by temporal discontinuities in early life. A qualitatively different analytic inquiry, based on quietude and deep listening, is proposed to capture the wordless moment and to invite the unspoken into dialogue.

Keywords:

• time
• silence
• quiet
• interpersonal theory
• dissociation
• death

Notes

1 Hawking died on March 14, 2018 after the writing of this article. He was 74 years old.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Suzanne Little

Suzanne Little, Ph.D., is supervising analyst, fellow, and faculty at the William Alanson White Institute, past president of the William Alanson White Psychoanalytic Society, and assistant professor of Psychiatry at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital, New York City.