This commentary focuses on Alex Michaelides' recent bestselling book The Silent Patient. I use the book's theme of a woman's murder of her husband and her silence over six years of psychotherapy, to explore the resisting patient in a forensic hospital. I will focus on questions including the function of silence on the psychotherapy of violent patients; problems confronting forensic psychotherapists regarding the diagnosis and treatment of violent patients; issues of revenge secondary to family traumas and childhood trauma; relational issues on the treatment of violent patients where murder has been committed; and issues related to silence, lying, deceit in the consultation room and the meaning of such communications in the course of forensic psychotherapy.