International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science (IJRISS) |Volume V, Issue V, May 2021|ISSN 2454-6186 www.rsisinternational.org Page 319 Exploring the Concept of Containment, Childhood Development and Silence in Alex Michaelides‟s Novel The Silent Patient: A Psychoanalytic Critique Mohammad Afzal Hossain Lecturer, Department of English, Mawlana Bhashani Science and Technology University, Bangladesh Abstract-This paper focuses to appropriate and apply the concepts of “container- contained” and “holding and holding environment” theorized respectively by Wilfred Bion and Donald Winnicott, across the nature of Alicia’s relationships with her father and husband to understand the resultant silence after her husband’s murder in the novel The Silent Patient. The objective of this paper is to explore and investigate how the nature of child Alicia’s relationship with her father impacted her childhood psychic development and how this leads to her husband’s murder from psychoanalytic perspectives of Bion and Winnicott. The childhood development of Alicia has been traced and explored deploying various concepts developed by Freud, Bion, Winnicott and Lacan using in-depth qualitative methods like content analysis and textual analysis. The paper finds that, the nature of Alicia’s relationship with her husband and the murder has interconnectedness with the nature of relationship Alicia had with her father. Alicia didn’t get a containing and holding environment during childhood. The importance of this paper lies in its scope and spectrum of revisiting the reinforced focus on having a contained and safe childhood development. Keywords: Container-Contained, Childhood Development, Silence, Psychoanalysis, Holding Environment. I. INTRODUCTION he way one‟s childhood is developed plays a very vital role in forming the personality and identity of one during the subsequent stages of life. This view of identity and predicament development has been widely explored and applied in a varied range of literature. Significance of childhood experiences and memory in forming the adult identity is thebasis for conceptualizing the personality development and disorder in the psychoanalytic realm of Freud. Freud is not the only one who has drawn extensively from childhood memories and experiences to analyze and understand some mental and psychic process in adults, Lacan(2013) has his own tripartite (Imaginary, Symbolic and Real) model of conceptualizing the child identity development with an added emphasis on the language when realm of signification is initiated in Symbolic order. Roos (2001) states Lacan‟s picture of the symbolic-real-imaginary orders are deeply rooted in Freudian notions of the oedipal phase, infantile sexuality, and the project of uncovering unconscious processes through language and associations. There are obviously other theories and conceptualizations to understand the psychic and mental processes in adults with conditions like psychosis, neurosis, anxiety disorder, ADHD, identity crisis, fear of death, fear of abandonment, fear of insignificance, fear of being not loved etc. There are many more other psychiatric conditions which have been taken into account in various experimentation and theorization to figure out the causes behind these conditions keeping the lens pointed toward childhood and the memories of that time. From generic point of view the novel The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides, published in 2019, can be categorized as a psychological thriller with two plots intertwined with each other. As the academy award winning director of Shakespeare in Love (1998) John Madden puts forward -“psychological thrillers focus on story, character development, choice, and moral conflict; fear and anxiety drive the psychological tension in unpredictable ways”, the story, character development and tension unfolds in this novel through one plot narrating the story from first person point of view of Theo Faber, a forensic psychoanalyst, to find out the reasons behind silence of Alicia after the murder of her husband. This plot also betrays who Theo Faber is, what was his childhood like, his parents, his family and his wife Kathy. Theo can be assumed as alter male persona of Alicia when we take a deeper look into his childhood, his relationship with his father and his love and family life with Kathy. Both Alicia and Theo are betrayed by their loved ones. Alicia is betrayed by her husband Gabriel Berenson; and Theo is betrayed by his wife Kathy. Gabriel had an affair with Kathy. The second plot has been fleshed with the story of Alicia writing her diary. The novel starts with an epilogue of Alicia writing her diary. Through this diary motif, the readers can have an intimate glimpse of the information, facts, truths and history about Alicia. The diary motif has also functioned as an element of suspense, element of revelation and also an element working as the machinery of “wiling suspension of disbelief (Coleridge, 1907). The readers tend to assume whatever Alicia has written in the diary as true, willingly negating the possibility of lies and distortions Alicia might use, considering her state of mind. We can have a glimpse about her state of mind at the very beginning of the novel when she writes in her diary “I have been feeling depressed lately” (Michaelides, p. 7), and before this she appears to be confused about what this diary writing practice should be called, a diary or journal and later she decides not to name it T