Interactional and Communicative Aspects of Resistance

ON THE FACE OF IT, THE DEFINITION of resistance as "all those forces within the patient which oppose the procedures and processes of analysis" (Greenson 1967, p. 59) ; or as "elements and forces in the patient which oppose the treatment process" (Sandler, et al. 1973, p. 71), seems both straightforward and fundamental. Nonetheless, since the very first comments on this subject by Freud (1893–95), any thoughtful reader would find cause to raise a host of questions and issues in respect to the psychoanalytic writings on the subject—and this is true to this very day. (For historical reviews of this topic and representative writings from classical psychoanalysts, see Freud 1905), (1912) ; (Greenson 1967) ; (Sandler, et al. 1973) ; (Stone 1973) ; (and Langs 1976b.)

Based on the prevailing and still accepted thesis that the analysis of resistances, and especially so-called transference resistances (a term usually defined quite broadly as any aspect of defense associated with the patient's relationship to the analyst), is at the heart of analytic work, writers have returned to this subject from time to time for restudy and clarification. The most thorough-going of these recent efforts is that by Greenson (1967), and his basic clinical approach to this subject in terms of four cornerstones—demonstrating that the patient is resisting; how he is doing it; what he is warding off; and why he is doing so—will be used here as a means of organizing the present reconsideration of this topic.

It is the main purpose of this presentation to offer several major extensions of our understanding of the concept of resistance and its technical implications. Some of these ideas can be readily integrated into present thinking, while others appear to call for major reformulation. The clinical findings and hypotheses to be presented here, will, by and large, be derived from an approach to the