Being silent … in both life and in therapy … is not a technique. It is, actually, a state of being; a state that always abides – patiently awaiting our arrival. Paradoxically, one can never will silence; one can only allow it to occur.

It often happens that we enter into the ‘therapeutic situation’ with expectations that there is something to be done. And who can’t recall that dreadful moment and dawning realization that there may not be in fact … anything to be done.

Although therapy is a form of conversation, talking often serves our clinging to “…the inner chatter of daily preoccupations”. The genius of Freud’s discovery and his attempt to capture it in ‘the rule’, is the healing power of conversations between us wherein essentially there is the silence of nothing to be done.

Why do we feel it to be so difficult and haunted by dread?

The healing power of silence between us awaits our allowance. But how much of our talking – to ourselves and to each other – remains banging on the empty pot to ward off the silence that may occur if we would allow it.

For all participants in a moment of conversation – for therapeutic conversation usually occurs only in moments – it is the disallowance of our usual experience of one’s self that opens the inner ear to muffled voices abiding within our very selves; selves in process of coming into being again … together. It is a moment’s allowance of listening together that can only occur in the space of that silence arising within and between us.

We sometimes forget that the talking and the silence are deeply embodied in every cell of our physical reality. Embodied are the memories of all the vicissitudes of our coming into being. Every fiber of our being has both tongue and ear – yearning to listen and to speak with each other and ourselves. Within the markings of the caprice of life upon us … together and alone … the muffled voices may be screams of rage and pain, the hollow emptiness of abandonment that is not a silence but a tearing void. Like a poultice the silence when allowed between us draws out the terror and the pain to be spoken and heard; drawn out to be declared and witnessed … drawn out to allow the once smothered joy of being together to sing again. Could it be that hope abides in that silent space between our souls and our selves?

After Marion Milner
The communications of primary sensual experience
In The Suppressed Madness of Sane Men

“… over the years,
I have been discovering
more and more
the mind’s capacities
for making deliberate contact
with its own background,

and the sometimes startling effects
of this meeting of mind and body;

included in the term background
is not only the background
of inner space,
but also

that of inner silence
that is the background to all noise,

that can bring with it
when made contact with,

silencing of the inner chatter
of daily preoccupations

together with
the deep sense of renewal
of vital energies.

Thus, included in this
I found myself
more and more
attending
the varying qualities
of the silences

between

me and my patients
within the sessions.”

For thought and comments, please send to: jdonnellydsw@gmail.com

©  2014 James Donnelly, DSW.LCSW

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South Garden Press, New York