Concurring with recent psychoanalytic literature, the author presents clinical evidence of 'multiple and layered' meanings of silence. Following a rich and lively account of his two years of work, through play and drawings, with six-and-a-half year old Amy, Chethik discusses the problems of technique that her silence posed. His major concerns included possible inaccuracies of interpretation; more than the usual need to be sure to keep separate his own constructions from those of his patient; the constant risk of seeming magical, a mind reader; countertransference reactions of rage and frustration that tempted him to make punitive responses; and the gratifying, as opposed to defensive, aspects of silence for the patient (a point Chethik finds insufficiently stressed in the literature).