We explore transference issues of silence and non-verbal communication in the psychotherapy of an 11-year-old child. When the silence of the analyst encounters that of the patient, the analytic process aimed at creating a secret recipient may pass through non-verbal motricity, so that facial expressions, physical posture, the whole undefinable gamut of the patient’s expressions, will step in to shore up verbal motricity that is lacking.
Adolescence, 2025, 43, 1, 23-33.
In this interview about her book, L’avenir d’un silence. Déréalisation, refoulement, amnésie des masses (The future of a silence: derealization, repression and amnesia of groups), Laurence Kahn describes the psychical functions of silence in both the individual and the group. The silence that hovers over the Nazi crimes in Germany serves to de-realize of the crimes that were committed. In families, silence, which plays a major role in adolescence, can serve the purposes of non-acknowledgement, but it can also, in some cases, serve the purposes of life.
Adolescence, 2025, 43, 1, 11-22.