Silent Virtues addresses six areas of mental functioning: patience, curiosity, privacy, intimacy, humility, and dignity. Each area is elucidated with the help of clinical, literary, and cultural material.

The book introduces a series of novel ideas, including:

(i) The distinction between patience as a component of the therapeutic attitude and the exercise of patience as a specific technical intervention.

(ii) The description of the five psychopathological syndromes involving curiosity: excessive, deficient, uneven, anachronistic, instinctualized, and false curiosity.

(iii) The description of four psychopathological syndromes (failed, florid, fluctuating, and false) involving intimacy.

(iv) The discourse on the importance of humility in selecting patients and in deciding upon the longevity of our professional careers.

(v) The description of three forms of dignity (metaphysical, existential, and characterological) and the various ways in which they affect psychoanalytic technique.