Megan Response

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Cook (1964) conducted research to evaluate progress in therapy when silence techniques were used. During this study, he gathered information from different therapy session from its onset and the end of those sessions. Then he evaluated the recorded data to check the percentage silence in forty 2-minute periods that the clients terminated. Using “Roger's Process Scale” from Rogers and Rablen’s scale of process in psychotherapy (as cited in Cook, 1964), he rated each period and drew a silence ration from those periods. The results showed that silence ratio seemed to index therapist behavior and might have value as an index of the potential productiveness of a therapeutic relationship. Based on finding, the author recommended that effective use of silence should be limited between the range of four to twenty percent each session to have a high index of therapy movement. This article sets the foundation for the use of silence, however it does not provide the therapists with guidelines on initiating or controlling silence technique so that it does affect the client negatively.

Frankel, Levitt, Murray, Greenberg, and Angus (2006), Conducted an investigation on the outcome of silence techniques when used in psychotherapy. Researchers coded silence period of three seconds using “the Pausing Inventory Categorization System” to compare them with data from census of silence. The results of this research suggested that therapists used silence technique to bring out the client’s emotion, stimulate thoughts, and the ability to express all that. They also established that therapist would not intervene during silence unless the thought that the clients were disengaged during therapy. This finding provid...

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... the STC. The determination of greater or lesser rapport were assessed and linked with whether the counselor or the client initiated or terminated the silence. The authors were able to confirm from the results just like in Sharpley (1997) research that high rapport between clients and therapist. Additionally research showed the silence period terminated by the clients produced a higher rapport than the silence periods, which were initiated and terminated by the therapists. Consequently, the authors suggested that students’ intimidation and anxiety level during therapy would be manageable if they continued with the integration of silence into the counselor training programs. Again, as previously stated for Sharpley (1997) research, the study needs to be broadened and also consider the clients’ aspect and perspective on the use of silence during therapy sessions.