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As informaes de link a seguir fornecem um link permanente para o artigo solicitado. Link permanente para este registro: o link a seguir o levar ao incio do artigo ou da citao. Recortar e colar: para colocar links de artigo em um documento da Web externo, basta copiar e colar o HTML a seguir, "<a href" Para continuar, no Internet Explorer, selecione ARQUIVO e SALVAR COMO na barra de ferramentas do seu navegador acima. No se esquea de salvar como arquivo de texto simples (.txt) ou como arquivo 'Web Page, HTML only' (.html). No FireFox, selecione ARQUIVO e SALVAR ARQUIVO COMO na barra de ferramentas do seu navegador acima. No Chrome, selecione com o clique direito (do mouse) nesta pgina e selecione SALVAR COMO Registro: 1 Ttulo: Silence in the Analytic Space, Resistance Or Reverie?: A Perspective From Loewald's Theory Of Primordial Unity Link permanente para este http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx? registro (Permalink): direct=true&db=pph&AN=CPS.036.0505A&lang=pt-br&site=ehostlive&scope=site Recortar e colar: <A href="http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx? direct=true&db=pph&AN=CPS.036.0505A&lang=pt-br&site=ehostlive&scope=site">Silence in the Analytic Space, Resistance Or Reverie?: A Perspective From Loewald's Theory Of Primordial Unity</A> Base de dados: PEP Archive

Silence in the Analytic Space, Resistance Or Reverie?: A Perspective From Loewald's Theory Of Primordial Unity1
Deborah Serani, Psy.D., candidate, Postdoctoral Programs in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy, Adelphi University; community supervisor, Long Island University at C. W. Post, Psy.D. Doctoral Psychology Program.; 12 Ivy Hill Drive Smithtown, NY 11787-4004 Some Of The Most Moving emotional moments in life are experienced in silence: joy, enlightenment, tranquility, and the blissful feeling of being in love, to name a few. Along a similar line, some of life's other poignant moments are experienced in a different kind of silence: grief, loneliness, and despair. Silence can communicate yes or it can mean no. It can say everything or reveal nothing. Silence in the analytic space has received its own worthy measure of investigation. In the analytic hour, silence takes on many different shades and tones. It may mean many different things for each patient and, in turn, for each analyst. It can encompass layers of thoughts and affects. As Freud (1915) concluded, it can serve as resistance to transference thoughts or as resistance to remembering and even repeating. Silence in the analytic space may also be an unconscious reenactment of a historical event, or
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a projective identification. It can serve as communication for needed space or an invitation for greater compassion. Silence in psychoanalysis has been thought to create a closed circle in treatment (Zeligs, 1961). It has also been emphasized as a response to object loss or as an acting out. There are those, such as Nacht (1964), who view silence as a reexperience of the perfect and total union at the preobject phase of development, while there are those such as Greenson (1961), who view silence as an empowering sense of a patient's means for retaining integrity. Silence has also been suggested to be the process toward verbalization and the securing of insight (Lowenstein, 1956). As Jacob Arlow (1961) so elegantly said, silence in treatment is different from any other kinds of silences. In silence, there lie psychic riches, as the case below reveals. Clinical Presentation I began working with Sarah in the fall of 1997, when she was referred by her former therapist for consultation with me. She was a petite woman in her early thirties, whose tightly bound body language eclipsed her delicate features. Sarah reported being in treatment forever and in many recovery groups over the course of her adult life for reduction of anxiety and flashes from posttraumatic stress disorder, a result of father-daughter incest. Though she had reported being in nearly every therapeutic situation known to man, she had never been involved in an analytic setting, or so she thought, and felt that this was her last hope. From the beginning of our work, Sarah spoke in hushed and fractured tones. It was clear that the historical events that carried her to this point in her life were quite harrowing. She described currently experiencing acute anxiety, flashes of rape scenes, severe lower abdominal and neck pain, crying jags, fears of contamination, sleeplessness, and difficulty eating. Moreover, difficulties with intimacy on an emotional, physical, and sexual level were hindering her two-year marriage. When I asked her why she left her previous therapist, Sarah replied, I grew more and more uncomfortable when I had nothing to say. I kinda got the feeling that she couldn't take me any further, or maybe she just was sick and tired of me. Because her previous therapist and I share a specialty in working with sexual assault, I did not question her referral to me as nothing more than a continuation of her posttraumatic work. I called to thank my colleague for this referral and to apprise her that Sarah did, indeed, make a connection with me, and would begin twice-weekly work. Over the course of several days, my colleague and I exchanged informational messages via phone machines regarding the case, but never spoke personally. Only later would I learn that her referral to me was for additional reasons. Historically, Sarah's mother died when she was nearly eighteen months old, reportedly from an abdominal aneurysm. Her father, a veterinarian with a home office, remarried about one year later. Sarah described her stepmother as a vacant alcoholic, and her father as an evil man, whom she feared nearly every minute of the day. He drank, was physically violent with her, and used to threaten to kill her in her sleep if she bothered him. Sarah reported that, when she was eleven years old, her father lost his license due to improper practices. She recalls a childhood of hearing animals scream in pain, and she was convinced that he either tortured the animals or purposefully didn't use enough anesthesia when he performed operations. Sarah continued filling in the details of her history by describing the excessive
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neglect of tenderness, the lack of security and even cleanliness of her home, and the unhygienic quality of the office in which her father worked. At the time of the revocation of his license to practice veterinary medicine, Sarah recalls, the incest began. She reported being raped many times during the course of three years and, on one occasion, being bound and gagged by her father. She had a stepbrother and two stepsisters who were also sexually abused, throughout their young lives, at the hands of her father, though not assaulted as violently as she. Sarah experienced vivid flashbacks of these assaults, and wished that she could be, You know, one of those lucky people who can't remember what happened to them. It would be confusing, I'm sure, not to know what really happened to you as a kid, she would say, but I would trade not knowing for the stopping of the things that play in my head in a minute. Sarah often cursed her ability to have such a vivid memory of the incidents, and when confronted with ones that she couldn't see so clearly, she took that as a victory. Several years later, at around age thirteen, she was experiencing severe stomach pains. It was soon discovered that Sarah was pregnant. Her memories of the events around this time were a bit hazy, though she recalls her stepmother bringing her to a community clinic for an abortion, and that she missed several weeks of school. It was after this abortion that her father's sexual assaults waned, and at age fourteen they stopped entirely. Sarah reported being a very good student and rarely missing school, except for the weeks after the abortion. The school setting was the safest place in the world for her. After graduating high school, she cut all family ties. She attended a state university, where she managed to get by with working part time, living a bleak and meager existence, and endlessly taking out student loans. Though she graduated with a bachelor degree in business, she suffered terrible bouts of abdominal pain and vivid flashbacks throughout her college years. Sarah reported never dating as a teenager or in college. She experienced tremendous anxiety when men would pay her some kind attention or direct sexual interest. At this same time, abdominal pains were so severe that she took herself to the university medical center. A series of tests and diagnostic procedures indicated no organic or physiological basis for her pain. This information turned her thoughts to the sexual assaults and her family history, thinking that they may be the source of her current symptoms and struggles. Sarah began treatment at the university counseling center in her junior year. When she graduated, she continued privately in her work with several therapists over several years. Sarah also got support from sexual-survivor groups and alcoholics anonymous meetings. In her thirties, she met and married a man, but sex and intimacy were things she couldn't understand or experience as loving or even pleasurable. I began work with Sarah on a twice-weekly basis, and she readily assimilated to the tempo and rhythm with which I worked. The early part of the treatment appeared to focus on symptom reduction, historical information, and strengthening a growing but tenuous alliance. In certain regards, she was a textbook good patient, arriving on time, paying promptly, but verbalizing was a great effort for her. She was a
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very likeable person, and both she and I found ourselves very drawn into the work that we were doing. Over the next year, a silence fell within each session, sometimes in the middle or nearing the end of the hour. In my own personal experiences, long moments of silence sometimes make me uncomfortable, and, as an analyst, I am aware of this propensity on my part to feel a bit uncentered when silence finds its place in the analytic work. With regard to Sarah, there was something that occurred in the room that was apart from my discomfort with silence. There was something that went beyond my personal experience, and I could feel that something persisting in the room. It was an unusual silence. Sarah sat in a chair across from me. Her body posture was relaxed and open. She held her arms at her sides and sometimes played with her fingers. Sometimes she followed the lines of the corduroy from the couch with her finger, in minute, almost imperceptible movements, and sometimes rolled the threads that flecked off in the palm of her hand. I also noticed that she often touched the textured clothing she wore. At other times, she closed her eyes in a pensive way, though I did not detect an overt avoidance in the solitude. During these silent moments, Sarah sometimes looked at things in the room quickly and vigilantly. On other occasions, she would slowly scan the room and smile without speaking. She would place her gaze on me, and it took me several sessions to realize that her silent gaze was not a way to seek a response on my part, or to communicate a thought or feeling to me. I experienced the silence as weightless, colorless, but not detached or discounting of my presence. It was not something about which I could feel a sense of grounding. I found it very confusing and disarming. Reflection on my part involved looking at many levels in the analysis. I poured over the derivatives, looked at transference perspectives, projective identifications, and even the level of the controlled regression in the consultation room. I also dug deeply into my own countertransference reactions: her experiences were horrific stories of abuse. Could it be that I could not bear to hear them? Did I, in some way, communicate to her that no more should be discussed here? Was this experience similar to what other therapists had with her? For many weeks I struggled with these layers in my work with her. The impasse only served to intensify my feelings of failure and to doubt my developing skills as an analyst. In the weeks that followed, I put to use several approaches. I tried addressing the meaning that silence had for her with delicate and well-timed inquiry. I asked her how she thought I was experiencing this silence, with not so delicate and well-timed inquiry. I looked at my own anxiety that surfaced from these extended periods of silence (I was waiting for the shoe to drop, but there was no shoe). Then I began thinking, is this the calm before the proverbial storm? But there was no storm on the horizon, just more silence. I even tried to reduce my tendency to jabber on, and avoided gesticulating with my hands by sitting on them. More structured inquiry and interpretation failed to move us out, around, or within these silences. The only thing that did stop, on occasion, was the circulation of blood to my hands. But the silence remained. Sometimes, in the sessions, Sarah responded to my pitiful attempts with a soft-spoken, I just feel quiet. I really don't know why, or It's all right to be quiet, isn't it? Other times, there would seem to be some acquiescence in the content of our work: talking about movies or books or things in the news. Her giving
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me that kind of slack made me realize that I was more uncomfortable with the silence than she was, but it was a silence that was different. I found myself thinking of our first meeting, where the words maybe she was just sick and tired of me played through my mind for a good portion of several sessions. I was also hoping that Sarah couldn't feel my insecurity and increasing frustration, or that she would not become simply sick and tired of me and my failings. Then one day, the heavens opened, not due to a stupendous clinical intervention or a brimming sense of clarity on my part, but rather to a rescheduled appointment in which Sarah's presence in the reception room proved to be the most important moment in our work. In the waiting room that day was the father of a hearing-impaired boy I was seeing. Upon opening the door at the completion of our session, I signed to the father and son, Good work, see you next week. A brief exchange occurred between them in sign language. As I invited Sarah into the consulting room, I observed her quietly taking in their dialogue. I didn't know you did work with the deaf she said, and as she walked into the consultation room, she continued, I'm kinda stunned. I said to myself, What an odd word, !stunned." You're stunned? I asked aloud. Why's that? Without skipping a beat, Sarah remarked, Well, it's kinda funny as I was watching that little boy sign with his father, I was wondering what it might have been like if my mother signed to me. Hummm I'm wondering why you're saying this. What's funny about it? Well, my mother she was deaf. My jaw dropped with such gravity that I'm sure my face was a caricature of its normal self for several minutes before I asked, in a slow and incredulous tone, She was deaf? Yeah, what's the big deal? Just that you never mentioned it before and it is a big deal! Though I knew Sarah's mother died when she was eighteen months old, she never indicated that her mother was deaf. As astonishing as this information was to discover, it was even more surprising that she never revealed this in her prior therapeutic work. How this most salient piece of information was not revealed by her or uncovered by me really surprised me at that moment. Sarah considered her mother's deafness insignificant in the scheme of things. It really isn't a relevant piece of my life. I don't even have memories of my mother what would her being deaf have to do with any of these things that I am dealing with now? I mean, I can't think of anything but the things that play in my head and the crazy house I grew up in. My mother wasn't alive then she wasn't part of that.

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I think this is a very relevant piece of history for you, I declared again. The layers of language, with its vibrating sound, its breathy touch, its reverberating feel within and upon a body, came full into view, at least for me. I wondered what Sarah's prenatal experience was like, not hearing sounds, but perhaps feeling them? Feeling the quiet as well. What were her early months socially, linguistically, and what was their impact, emotionally and psychologically, on her? My knowledge of early child development and Deaf studies also added grist to this mill. Loewald's Theory of Primordial Unity At this time in the analysis, I was knee-deep in my analytic training. As I look back now, it was a fortuitous turn that the work of Hans Loewald was being covered. As I was reading The Introduction of Eros by Jonathan Lear (1998), things gelled together to make sense, and I was able to carry more into my work with Sarah as a result of my readings on Loewald. A discussion of the work that Loewald has brought to the field of psychoanalysis would require more time than I have here, but I wish to illustrate several of his contributions and discuss how they influenced the artistic and theoretical leanings of my work. The central notion for Loewald (1960) is that the beginning point of psychological development is in a seamless world of the mother and the baby. It is this original experience that enables the subject's self and the world that envelops him to emerge as distinct entities. Inherent in this theory of a unitary whole is the experience of language and sensory events. Language has always been a central feature of psychoanalytic theories, from Freud's slips of the tongue to symbolism in dreams. Loewald, however, approaches language from a perspective that is both distinct and extraordinary among analytic theorists (Mitchell & Black, 1995). It is important, first, to distinguish how other theorists view language. For many scholars, language is viewed as a developmental skill that results from the internal experience of the infant toward its reaching for the outside world (Mahler, Pine & Bergman, 1975; Stern, 1985; Sullivan, 1950). Loewald considers language a form of sensory experience. It is his belief that language is an integrative process. It does not occur as a consequence of interaction; it is not viewed as a milestone step in the developmental arc of an individual. It is a sensory experience from the start of the mother-child dyad. It is a pinnacle experience that binds feelings, sensations, perceptions, aspects of the self, and aspects of the other in a seamless, sensuous unity. The bodily handling of and concern with the child, the manner in which it is fed, touched, cleaned, looked at, talked to, called by name, recognized and re-recognized all these and many other ways of communicating shapes and moulds him so that he can begin to identify himself, to feel and recognize himself as one, and as separate from others yet with others. [Loewald, 1960, p. 19] shapes and moulds him so that he can begin to identify himself, to feel and recognize himself as one, and as separate from others yet with others. [Loewald, 1960, p. 19] One might say that while the mother utters words, the infant does not perceive words but is bathed in sound, rhythm, etc. as accentuating ingredients of a uniform experience. [Loewald, 1977, p. 7] Loewald (1960) radically revised Freud's concept of instinctual drives by rejecting the idea that drives are
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derived purely from a closed psychic system. He agreed with Freud that drives are prehuman residues, but held that they are not discharge-seeking, but rather connection-seeking (Mitchell & Black, 1995). Loewald embraced the structures of id, ego, and superego, but saw them as dialectics, not sharp dichotomies. The mind is in a continual interactional process, related to reality and the interactions outside of the self and within the self (Teicholz, 1999). Loewald's mind does not become interactive; it is interactive in its very nature. There is a boundaryless stream, a reconciliation and reintegration of the primary and secondary processing. This facile ebb and flow with which the individual can move within and between these levels is what constitutes well-being in Loewald's definition. Mitchell (1998) goes further, and eloquently describes Loewald's use of this primordial unity, likening it to contemporary cosmology, a primal density, where the baby's and the mother's experiences collapse into one. Loewald suggests this experience in which there is no differentiation from inside and outside, self and other, actuality and fantasy, past and present. These earliest forms of experience never disappear it underlies the later differentiations and bounded structures that make adult life possible. [p. 826] The idea of language as a sensory experience and the attachment bonding of mother and child have been well documented. Loewald's theory of language as a sensory experience and the notion of a seamless unity for the mother and child can be illustrated in the prenatal experience. During the last trimester of pregnancy, the fetus rests with its head against the mother's pelvis and has considerable responsiveness to sound, particularly human speech (Eisenberg, 1976). When the mother can speak and is carrying a baby who can hear, this period presents an opportunity for the fetus to experience its mother's voice, heartbeat, and breathing patterns through bone conduction (Als, Lester & Brazelton, 1979). There is another function of language, namely, to convey the mother's closeness at a distance and her presence in her absence. When the child is alone, cannot see, touch, or smell the mother, hearing her voice tends to keep her present in a somewhat remote and less global fashion. As mentioned, Loewald believed that language is typically first conveyed to the child by the mother's voice and in the allpervasive ministrations that mother effects. These ministrations include, for example, touch and visual holding. The primordial unity for each and every child has a uniquely tailored character. Silence and HearingSilence and Deafness For the hearing individual, silence is a form language that is, most often, secondary to that of verbal language. Spoken language shapes up socially, emotionally, and intellectually. In contrast, silence for the hearing-impaired individual takes on its own significance. Whereas the hearing person spends less time experiencing silence than speaking, the deaf or hearing-impaired individual exists in this quietude indefinitely. Statistically speaking, approximately 90 percent of children born to deaf or hearing-impaired parents have normal hearing (Denmark, 1994). In the case of children who have adequate hearing, but whose parents are deaf, it may be that increased rates of touching, visual stimulation, and facial expression can compensate for the absence of auditory stimulation. Unfortunately, there is little research comparing the development and attachment patterns in deaf children compared to hearing children (Marschark, 1993).

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Moving back to Sarah and this revelatory piece of information, the next few sessions were devoted to linking together aspects of her life. We came to learn of stories, as told by relatives, that her mother communicated a great deal by touch when Sarah was an infant. It seems that Sarah was an easy baby, and her mother often kept her nearby, in a swing or on the floor, while she quietly tended to household things. Perhaps because Sarah was an infant with a good disposition, her mother was able to move about in a peripheral kind of distance, albeit in a connected way. During one session, Sarah said, Apparently my father hated the sound of her voice. My mother spoke very little in the house, I was told. This information made sense to me: her mother did not sign and did not speak. In the late 1700s, there was a raging debate between teaching deaf individuals a manual language (what we now know as sign language) or assimilating the deaf to the hearing world by teaching them lip reading and speech, denouncing the use of manual or signed language (Denmark, 1994). This debate raged on, sadly, until the 1970s. At that time, research and common sense led to a far better understanding of deafness and better ways of communicating. But for Sarah's mother, her education would have been during the time of the Oral Training School where she was educated to lip read and use spoken language, and perhaps punished for using any form of manual or signed language (Lane, 1989). We sat in silence for a while, and then she continued, I guess there was a lot of quiet in the house. A lot of looking and a lot of quiet. Much like we are doing here, I replied. Silence again presented itself in the room, though this time, I did something different. I don't really know why, at that moment, I did this, but I signed the word quiet, which also means silence, calm, tranquillity. Sarah reproduced the sign, and we practiced it in the silence of the room until she got it right. With that, the session ended. Reclaiming the Primordial Unity in Sign Language Was my signing to Sarah my impulse to gratify her repressed wish? Was it my countertransferential reaction to do something different, so the silence would not make me anxious? Or was it a bridging of her past to this present with me, in a way that could afford her greater meaning in her life? I believe it was a repetition that was pulled in from the most primitive senses within each of us, and most probably a necessary step in her work, in order to move on to higher levels of working through. Loewald (1971) describes the analytic relationship as a re-creation, at a higher level of organization, of the mother-infant field. The mechanics of analysis harness the libidinal flow between patient and analyst, like that of the infant and the mother, toward reestablishing their unique original unity. This time, though, the analytic task is to transform these unconscious memory traces into recollections. It is a repetition with its face towards the future while aware of the past (p. 63.) The silences that had felt so weightless and colorless took on a different hue as I reconsidered the meaning of these silences. The arc of our work turned toward understanding the experience of the silence as the connection she had once held with her mother, who did not speak and did not sign. It was quietness, not a silence. I recalled the fact that she had asked me, early in our work when she consoled me during my initial struggles, It's all right to be quiet,
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isn't it? The primary world Sarah and her mother shared was a seamless unity wherein silence and different textures resonated. The kinds of sounds she was immersed in were, perhaps, sounds that we take for granted: the sounds of inhaling and exhaling, the palpable rhythm of a heart beating, digestive sounds, coughing, an occasional sneeze, sporadic laughter, and very few sounds of the human voice. As Sarah emerged as a newborn, her world was primarily visual and tactile. Her mother tended to her with loving touches and expressive visual attending, in close proximity and from far away. One can see how this sensual way of meeting the world plays out for her. Her visual attentiveness to things and her touching of objects seemed, perhaps, to tell her more about the world than words did. Clinical observations that initially led me to unsettling conclusions were revisited in the analytic work. Sarah's quietness and silent gazing were now observed in a new way. It was as if the ambient sounds and visual effects provided both a blanket of subjectivity and a state of contentment. The intermittent sounds of a car passing by, the next patient walking up the stairs, the breeze hissing through the open window were experiences that were seamless in her environment. For someone like me, these were sometimes distractions. The shadows and contours from the sunlight or the way a picture would move from the force of the airconditioning system were more like company than intruders. For Sarah, being part of the world meant lingering in its peripheralness. It is my belief that her silence in the sessions was an attempt at finding again that original unity, that primal density. My inquiry, interpretations, and interventions were missing the mark for a reason. Freud (1914) observed that patients often yielded to a compulsion to repeat painful experiences. He believed that repetition was in the service of resisting the process of remembering. Freud (1920) developed this theory further, suggesting that the repetition of traumatic experiences was to ultimately master the origin of trauma. For Freud, transference was seen as a static experience, bound to a linear concept of time. Loewald (1971a) elaborated on Freud's notion of the repetition compulsion. It was an opportunity to circumvent painful events by returning to them in a transference that was not seen as immutable, but living and vital. Working through has decidedly to do with redoing, not undoing the past. The repetition here is not duplication or reiteration, but recreation, to be distinguished from reproduction (p. 68). For Loewald, the transference and the repetition compulsion are rich and indispensable processes by which analyst and patient can deal with the old in a new and different way, and, moreover, give it a potent meaning for the future. These are aspects in the analysis that are to be welcomed and encouraged. A more contemporary view, such as Benjamin (1995), suggests that the pinnacle of working through is when the patient recognizes a significant center of an experience as a result of the patient-analyst participation. This tells the analyst and, moreover, the patient that something vital in the analytic work has been revealed and has had an impact. This is Loewald's notion of taking the opportunity to transform the transference into something newrepeating so that re-creation can occur. Sarah was able to use the transference in the analysis to bring back to life a mother and an earlier time
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that were literally unheard. The horror and trauma of the sexual assaults and her rage toward her father and stepmother were suspended for the time being. Where previous therapeutic work chipped away at those issues, it was the seamless unity that was now the focus, the area that needed to be reestablished, repeated, and reworked. What unfolded in the transferential themes were needs for safety in the face of longing for nurturance. In the early part of our work, I remember, Sarah kept a great distance from me as she walked in and out of the office. She would tell me that she feared, in all people, a threat that they would harm her, much like her father did. There were times when I could feel her taking this new object relationship of the patient-analyst, and trying to potentiate it into the old one. I keep waiting for you to do something that will hurt me, she'd confess time and again. Like what? I'd always ask. Sarah never did offer her answers, but in time she came to learn that notion not to be true. As we explored the sexual and physical assault at the hands of her father and the emotional neglect at the hands of her stepmother, she no longer generalized from those objects in her life, and came to reorganize different levels of meaning for different people. In another example, recognizing that the silence that offered her a sense of peace did not always make others feels at ease was particularly helpful in the dynamics of her marriage. For there, she was happy with just being with her husband. He yearned for more doing. Discussion It was through the work of Loewald that Sarah and I came to understand her silence, the silence that took on many forms. It was a resistance to relating and reaching out to others. It was also a regressive retreat from the horror of the abuse and neglect she experienced at the hands of her father and stepmother. Falling silent was an avoidance of contact, though in another manner, falling silent was also an effort to reach the safe quietness, which was linked to her early attachment to her mother. And in yet another way, Sarah's silence reflected a sense of herself as belonging to the worldLoewald's notion of primordial unity. Sarah became aware that although she felt safe and content in her silence, others often found her awkward or socially off. Repeating and allowing the transference to find its way through us enabled her to go back to discover very important aspects that made finding her authenticity possible. When we came to appreciate the central reconnection with her early experiences with her mother, we were better able to understand her propensity to have nothing to say in sessions. The next several weeks were spent on just having the silence. Remaining in the quietness was now not a curious or frustrating exchange, but one of a union of sorts. Slochower (1999) suggests that much of the work in analysis facilitates both the sense of doing and the sense of being, where doing equals articulation and being equals directing attention on what goes on inside the patient and within the analyst-patient dyad. She describes this as the interior experience, the sense of internal stillness and resiliency that allows for the individual to experience truly the edges of her own insideness (p. 798). The origin of this capacity to be alone and experience this interiority is an
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offshoot of the mother-infant relationship. In essence, it is the parent's ability to be alone, still, or quiet that supports the child's evolving sense of interiority. Being in the silence was something with which Sarah was comfortable. It was a place for her that was familiar. For othersher husband, co-workers, and therapists, myself includedit was an uncentering experience. Instead of the silence offering her safety and a nurturance with others, as it did with her mother, it felt more like a chasm. It split her from others and heightened her panic and terror all the more. The better-late-than-never discovery of historical information of her mother's deafness allowed for the re-creation of the primal density: the original unity where she and her deaf mother shared a silence that transcended words. Our being in the silence, without my feeling uncentered and without her feeling of separateness, enabled Sarah to find the edges of her own insideness. In having the silence, Sarah and I learned the basis of where her psychic life began and how it evolved. This knowledge propelled us to look in directions that had no light and sound before. At present, Sarah is planning to pursue a graduate degree in Deaf studies, and would like to be an interpreter. She has enrolled in beginning American Sign Language classes, and finds deep meaning in its mastery. She is reporting fewer somatic complaints, and is sleeping and eating better. Though she still experiences flashbacks of her sexual assaults, their frequency is moderately reduced. There continues to be a flourish of dreams and early recollections that are now available in the analysis. Sarah has also indicated a greater feeling of trust in her marriage, and that she and her husband now have their own signs for things they need to communicate. She remains focused on the many issues that deeply trouble her, and takes me to task with their darkness. Though there is considerably more analytic work to be done (trauma of the sexual assaults, reparation of the roles for her father and stepmother), it feels to me, and to Sarah as well, that something of great importance happened in our search for a sound and a meaning in the silence. In the analytic space, we encourage patients to talk. In essence, the talking is, indeed, the cure. In closing, I borrow from Sandor Ferenczi (1916): Speech is silvern, but in this case, silence was golden. Footnotes 1 This paper was presented at the Twentieth Annual Spring Meeting of the Division of Psychoanalysis (39), American Psychological Association, San Francisco, April 4-9, 2000. I wish to thank Dr. David A. Brand for his invaluable guidance in its formulation. References 1 Als , H. , Lester , B. & Brazelton , T.B. (1979), Dynamics of the behavioral organization of the premature infant: A theoretical perspective. In: Infants Born at Risk, ed. T. M. Field, A. M. Sostek, S. Goldberg & H. H. Shuman. New York: Spectrum Press , pp. 173-192.
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