Psychoanalysis.  2025 Apr;36(2):28-35. 10.18529/psychoanal.2025.36.2.28.

Earth in Which Creative Footings Root: Rendering Silence Through Winnicott’s Concepts

• Kim HS
• Sohn HS

• KMID: 2567691
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.18529/psychoanal.2025.36.2.28

Abstract

This treatise examined the intricate relationship between silence, solitude, and creativity in psychoanalytic perspective. Starting with an overview of how silence was understood, the paper subsequently explained in depth the interrelation among silence, solitude, and creativity and concluded with therapeutic implication. It focused on understanding the capacity to be alone not only as a mature or highly sophisticated phenomenon, but also a phenomenon of early life. While transitional phenomena have been extensively studied in relation to creativity, the current discourse attempts to convey that the nascent form of “being” also certainly is linked to creativity. It could be regarded as what Winnicott had sought to reach through his developing course of writings from 1958 to 1971. It seems that imposed silence, as an environment, is a prerequisite for fostering the capacity to be alone. There can also be chosen silence as a manifestation that contains solitude, the incommunicado element, and the core self. When this state manifested as chosen silence encounters a sensation or an impulse, creativity might be culminated. In brief, silence and capacity to be alone can develop in tandem into chosen silence of quietude and solitude, respectively. Using and rediscovering impulses into creative expressions are then feasible. Thus, in the interest of creativity, analysts should respect patient’s silence.

Keyword

Silence; Capacity to be alone; Incommunicado; Creativity; Winnicott