Arrests in psychological development, notably in the area of object relations, which maintain out-of-phase object attachments and behavioural repetitions, are the result of primal repressions and instinct-object fixations. These fixations manifest themselves in the psychoanalytic situation as the so-called resistance of the id or the unconscious, one of the five types of resistance described by Freud.

Some analysts, following an early usage of Freud, consider working through to be the therapeutic response to every kind of resistance. Others, following a later usage of Freud which is here supported, consider the process of working through to be the specific analytic response to the resistance of the id. In either case there is no concensus on the nature of the process.