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In psychoanalysis the theory of technique has always been intimately related to the prevailing theories of mental functioning and neurosis. Based on the topographical viewpoint, a concept of a dynamic-economic drive was postulated in accordance with which a force derived from the sexual instincts in the unconscious sought immediate discharge. Because of an intrapsychic conflict, this was opposed by a force in the system Pcs which influenced the highly energetic and mobile drive cathexis of the system Ucs. As verbalization in the therapeutic situation was considered to be the principal means of redeploying the energic forces in the mental apparatus, silence was considered to be identical with resistance, and was often treated concretely as of an 'oral', 'anal', 'phallic', or 'urethral' nature—equating the spoken word respectively with food, feces, the phallus, or a stream of urine.
The realization that resistance is almost entirely unconscious, that not all resistance is eliminated by verbalization, and that even resistance and silence can be expressions of the discharge of unconscious self-directed aggression, led to the formulation of a structural hypothesis that the function of adaptation is vested in the ego. Silence in analysis can now be categorized as that which primarily serves the functions of defense and discharge. Silence which represents a massive countercathexis against the demands of the id is an example of the function of defense in an intersystemic conflict. Silence due to a conscious reluctance to talk following interpretation of the defenses of projection, isolation, and denial—with which the ego repudiates the derivatives of the drive that have entered consciousness—is the result of an intrapsychic conflict.
As a vehicle for drive discharge, silence occurs in intensely empathic object relations in the transference. The patient's silence may have the aim of inviting the analyst to share in the emotional experience of his fantasy or to reinstinc