The Silent Patient

Theo pushes Alicia to try and explain her silence. At first, she claims that she has nothing to say—after the murder, she tried to speak, but nothing would come out. Alicia then tells Theo that she is willing to talk only because she feels that he believes her about the man: “I want you to understand,” she explains.   Alicia then informs Theo that the man inside her house was not actually the anonymous man at the window; it was Jean-Felix, come to talk about the exhibition.

As the session progresses, the topic of conversation widens. Theo and Alicia talk about their childhoods, and specifically about their abusive fathers. Theo acknowledges that he and Alicia are swapping roles, confusing the boundaries between who is a therapist and who is a patient. “Soon it would be impossible to tell who was who.”