You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
This paper deals with the resistances which may arise in the analyst against communicating to the patient points he has observed or comprehended. These "counterresistances" indicate (as do the patient's resistances against communicating certain thoughts) the most important conflicts within the patient. For the counterresistances are as a rule the expression of the analyst's identification with the patient's resistances, even though they may at the same time be related to a conflict within the analyst.
The patient's resistance to an interpretation shows, according to Freud, that the latter has been incomplete. Analogously, the counterresistance to giving an interpretation means that the understanding it embodies is as yet incomplete. The cause of these counterresistances thus often lies in the fact that the understanding in question embraced only part of the patient's personality. The understanding may, for instance, have referred to the id, without having taken the ego sufficiently into consideration, or may have referred to an aggressive tendency of the patient's without having included the reaction of his libidinal wishes.