Solitude, Silence, and the Training of Psychotherapists: A Preliminary Study

Abstract

The spiritual disciplines of silence and solitude have long been practiced within the contemplative Christian tradition as a means of character transformation and experiencing God. Do these disciplines affect the use of silence in psychotherapy for Christian clinicians in a graduate training program? Nineteen graduate students in clinical psychology were assigned to a wait-list control condition or a training program involving the disciplines of solitude and silence, and the groups were reversed after the first cohort completed the spiritual disciplines training. One group, which was coincidentally comprised of more introverted individuals, demonstrated a striking increase in the number of silent periods and total duration of silence during simulated psychotherapy sessions during the period of training. The other group, more extraverted in nature, did not show significant changes in therapeutic silence during the training. These results cause us to pose research questions regarding the interaction of personality characteristics and spiritual disciplines in training Christian psychotherapists.

Toward a psychology of silence.

“…The findings also support the work of Wepfer (1996), who found that silence was associated with a client's experience of insight and with therapeutic success. Vanmeter, McMinn, Bissell, Kaur, and Pressley (2001), noting that practicing silence and solitude have long been part of the contemplative Christian tradition as a means of character transformation, asked whether these disciplines affected the use of silence in psychotherapy for Christian clinicians. Following training sessions in silence and solitude, subjects who were premeasured as introverts demonstrated a significant increase in the number and duration of silent periods during simulated psychotherapy sessions whereas the extraverts showed no significant differences in their therapeutic silence.…”

Silence and Silenced: Implications for the Spirituality of Survivors of Sexual Abuse

“…The need to manage how others perceive us is strong, and the discipline of silence stops our efforts at self-justification. 48 The ability to appreciate silence requires a perception that the silent space is a safe one to explore. In allowing ourselves to enter into times of silence we run the risk that we may find ourselves experiencing uncomfortable feelings such as alienation, loneliness, anger and resentment.…”