Book excerpt: What ever happened to silence? Actually nothing, and Harry Wilmer takes great pains to show how we have submerged it under a toxic barrage of noise. Using both clinical examples of the power of silence from his case histories, and cultural values of silence, he uncovers a astonishing theme in the Japanese idea of MA as silence. Wilmer points out how silence gives meaning to words, dreams, thought, action and music. From his long experience as a Jungian analyst, he weaves his ideas into an eminently practical treatise on the phenomenology of silence. With many references to literature as well as his personal life experiences and crises, he offers a readable and important new story of the universal and spiritual significance of silence in a world of jackhammer noise.