[Silence, to be noticed: on an apparently paradoxical significance of silence].

Reporting a case of his own, the author discusses a meaning of silence in psychoanalytic individual therapy that seems to be paradoxical at first sight: his female patient was silent during the session in order to be noticed. The patient tended to aggrandize men from which it followed that the distance between herself and those men grew to such an extent that they could not perceive her any more. The therapist's talking less than his patient served as a transference trigger as to the patient's asymmetrical relation to men described above. Keeping nearly as much silent as the therapist, the the patient created a more symmetrical situation thus diminishing the "distance" between the therapist and herself so that she could be perceived by him again. Realizing the discrepancy between this neurotic fantasy and reality and working through the phallic-narcissistic conflict involved, enabled the patient to change her behavior in therapy and later on in her life outside.