Greene briefly reviews the literature on the effect of early object loss on patients in analysis and then cites material from a case treated by psychoanalytic psychotherapy, in which silence on the part of the therapist enabled the patient to actualize, via the transference, the sense of early object loss hitherto repressed. Through this, the patient experienced separation and individuation and worked through the early loss. Using the clinical material, Greene describes the rationale behind his choice of maintaining silence or speaking and stresses the need for the patient to be enabled to experience the pain of separateness and loss.