An adolescent boy electively mute for over a decade was hospitalized and initially treated with a non-verbal therapy within the context of a psychoanalytic developmental theory. His mutism was not confronted directly although his sphere of non-vocal verbalization—notewriting—was directly enlarged by behaviourist approaches. His non-verbal expressions and gestures were mirrored and expanded into pantomime and absurd theatre. Paradox and playfulness were used to defuse the explosive potential of enacted themes of aggression, omnipotence, and disintegration. His silence became conceptualized not simply as a failure of vocal socialization but as a transitional phenomena, self-re-created from maternal silence, a securing operation in the midst of a frighteningly nonmaternal world, a hold on infantile omnipotence, and an imaginative and productive creation from which a stable though limited personality and a whole world of interpersonal relations could be founded.