In a world obsessed with noise, few things are as unsettling as silence. We fill every empty moment with words, music, scrolling — anything to drown out what might emerge from within. Yet, in psychoanalysis, silence is often where genuine communication begins. It is in that quiet space between words that something true begins to stir.
Spotnitz said, “The patient’s silence speaks the language of the resistance.” In that silence, the analyst listens not only to what is said but to what cannot yet be said. The pauses, the hesitations, the sudden stillness — all are filled with unconscious meaning. Silence becomes a kind of speech, one that demands a different kind of listening.
Wilfred Bion taught that the analyst must learn to “suspend memory and desire” — to wait, without forcing understanding. This waiting is not passive; it is active containment. The analyst holds what the patient cannot yet tolerate. Something similar occurs in prayer. The Psalms remind us, “Be still, and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10). Stillness is not emptiness but presence — a quiet awareness that holds space for what is too vast for words.
Many analysands fear silence because it feels like abandonment. As Donald Winnicott observed, “It is a joy to be hidden, and a disaster not to be found.” The analyst’s quiet presence — much like divine presence — transforms isolation into solitude, the capacity to stay alone without fleeing from feeling. The patient learns that they can exist, even when not constantly performing for another’s gaze. In that moment, the false self begins to dissolve, and the true self starts to emerge.
In therapy silence often marks the edge of something alive but fragile. It is the moment when familiar narratives break down and the patient confronts what has not yet taken form. Anxiety may rise, along with irritation or boredom, but these affects are themselves communications. They signal that something unsymbolised is pressing for recognition. If the analyst rushes to fill the space, the moment is lost. If the analyst can stay, grounded and receptive, silence becomes a threshold rather than a void — a space where experience starts to take shape and where something new can develop.
Silence is not the absence of meaning; it is often where deeper meaning begins to appear. As Elijah discovered on the mountain, God was not in the wind, nor in the earthquake, nor in the fire, “but in a still small voice” (1 Kings 19:12). In the analytic room, truth also tends to emerge quietly.
When we allow ourselves to remain in silence, we begin to hear our own inner voice and perhaps something greater. When in noise and action, there is no need to look within. We keep ourselves too busy and distracted to hear that inner voice calling. Noise keeps us outwardly focused; silence forces us to turn inward. When in silence our true self may start to emerge accompanied by all the unwanted, yet necessary, feelings.