If a patient remains totally silent there can of course be no analysis. Usually the analyst can alter the disturbing taciturnity of the patient successfully, even before he is able to understand its deeper motivations. There being no generalizations that cover all instances, the author discusses certain clinical types of nonpsychotic patients who at the beginning of the analysis are unable to talk for an unusually long time. His considerations apply also to the more frequent silences, the common transient violations of the basic analytic rule.

Schematically they are divided into friendly-passive and active-aggressive taciturn types. The former may be helped by interpreting their inhibited orality as a new symptom of their neurosis. Characteristic of the second