ABSTRACT
The appropriate use of silence is supported in the patient's material in three ways, the first two of which provide definitive confirmation. There are, however, sessions in which patients do not definitively validate an appropriate silence, but merely accept it without manifest or derivative comment. This chapter presents additional responses to therapist silence. A study of the attributes of appropriate and inappropriate therapist silence provides the therapist with the main implications of each of the distinctive forms of silence and facilitates the comprehension of the patient's derivative communications in response to an ongoing silent intervention. The chapter presents few other perspectives on the therapist's use of silence. The therapist's use of silence is a basic tool in the communicative technique of psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy. Silence reflects first and foremost the therapist's fundamental faith in the patient. Through the communicative approach, a therapist discovers that many patients require far fewer active interventions than previously imagined or proposed.
