Discussion of Lawrence J. Friedman's Article, From Gradiva to the Death Instinct

I shall direct my discussion to a questioning of this paper's general theoretical and technical soundness. The authors, impressed by some thought-provoking contributions made by participants of a recent panel on “The Silent Patient,” elected to single out the role of the analyst's silence. They undertook a clinical experiment in which they used the analyst's prerogative of silence in an obviously excessive way. Their stated purpose in so doing was “… to examine the therapeutic effect of the analyst's silence at various stages of treatment under varying conditions of transference and resistance, and arrive at conclusions concerning a ‘therapeutic technique of silence.‘”

Such an aim, hurried and overreaching, is, to say the least, an all-encompassing endeavor. For, as we are all aware, the varying states of silence which occur during the analytic hour—either that of analyst, analysand or both—comprise the most complex of psychic phenomena. The manifold meanings and perplexing qualities of mood and affect which are contained in and may be communicated by states of silence fill and sometimes characterize the analytic situation. Thus silence is an integral part of every psychoanalysis.

This subtle, everpresent, early determined attitude plays a continuous role in the development and course of the transference, countertransference and the maintenance of the therapeutic alliance. By its very nature, silence provides a continuous medium for the communication and discharge of affect. But it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to isolate and study

the effects of silence “as an independent and experimental variable.” Yet, this is precisely what the authors have done.

They have reported six fragmentary clinical vignettes illustrating what happens as the result of deliberate and prolonged analytic silence. I cannot appraise the clinical results. Some, I do not understand. These patients were all severely ill. Yet, certain salutary, transitory changes did take place in cons