The Therapist's Active Silence — A Psychoanalytic Formulation

Silence in psychoanalytic practice has always provoked theoretical tensions. Passive, neutral silence is contrasted with the notion of active silence, which constitutes a deliberate and functionally charged therapeutic condition. In the present study, active silence is analyzed not as the absence of intervention, but as a regulatory and empathic tool through which old trauma emerges, is contained, and processed—trauma that does not remain in the past but acts in the present via transference and symptoms. Thus, silence operates not as a pause but as presence without words—a vessel for the unconscious and a condition for the transformative re-signification of experience.