This presentation has somewhat artificially separated tactical from strategic resistances, and has singled out the handling of resistance from other aspects of the theory and practice of psychoanalytic technique. In the actual clinical situation, the handling of resistance is an integral and major component in over-all technique and practice. It is intertwined continuously with all the other technical elements and processes of psychoanalytic intervention.

But the understanding of resistance and the systematic, continuous, and ever deepening ways by which the analyst helps the patient to deal with them is one of the crucial differences that separate psychoanalysis from all the other forms of psychiatric treatment.