ABSTRACT
The first paper I published, in 2015, is entitled “The Phenomenon of Silence in Psychotherapy” in the journal, Attachment: New Directions in Psychotherapy and Relational Psychoanalysis. This paper explored the issue of silence from the perspective of Heard and Lake. In that paper, I explored how the use of silence can be seen as a form of communication and can be outside of the person’s awareness and a manifestation of a defensive system. In this chapter, I explore how the pathway to finding a voice can be either facilitated or inhibited by drawing on the attachment literature, neuroscience, affective neuroscience, and developmental psychology. I will use examples from my clinical practice and will draw on the poetry of Seamus Heaney, whose work is relevant to clients who have experienced trauma. The author uses the word loss to refer to “the loss of one’s speaking voice,” and the recovery of that loss in the shared experience of finding one’s voice.
