The Subtle Power of Silence

Abstract

Dennis Patrick Slattery , “The Subtle Power of Silence,” Review of Robert Sardello's Silence. Benson, North Carolina: Goldenstone Press, 2006, Jung Journal: culture & psyche, 1:4, 72-76. Traditionally, silence has been understood as the absence of noise or equated with quiet. Robert Sardello, therapist, spiritual director, and poet of the soul, sees such designations as actually suffocating silence. His study, with co-author Cheryl Sanders-Sardello, reimagines Silence from the perspectives of depth psychology, religious spiritual traditions, therapy, as well as phenomenology. His work uncovers the complex, repetitive, spiralic, and healing powers of silence, its essential place as a third element in human relations and a productive force that opens one to the potentially creative aspect of one's own being. Death forces, by contrast, in the form of consumer culture, prepackage life and experience to be consumed, not lived creatively. Sardello's book has far-reaching implications for therapy, education, and politics to name a few.