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In our analytic work it occasionally happens that we see and understand something in the patient which seems important to us, but we do not reveal it to him. At times this abstention seems advisable: we feel we are complying with the rules governing interpretation. But at other times this is not the case; we are aware of an emotional factor within us which prevents us from communicating what we have perceived, as, for instance, a fear of hurting the patient or causing him too much anxiety, a fear of hurting the patient or causing him too much anxiety, a fear of losing him or of provoking an excessive ‘positive’ or ‘negative’ transference response. In such cases the doubt may arise as to whether our abstention was really objectively justified or was merely a rejection produced by subjective factors, a ‘counterresistance’ opposing the interpretation.
Observation shows that these counterresistances usually coincide with resistances in the patient that concern the same situation. Sometimes it is as though there were a tacit agreement between analyst and patient, a secret understanding to keep quiet about a certain topic.
These observations are frequently accompainied by the feeling that the situation in question-seen but not interpreted-is precisely the most urgent one at the moment. This would mean that the counterresistance not merely referred to, but corresponded to one of the patient's central conflicts. Personal expreience and reflection confirm what this feeling suggests and create the impression that such counterresistances become an important subject of analytic technique. On the other hand, as my field of observation is rather limited, I can affirm nothing about the frequency of these phenomena, a matter which would require the collective experience of many workers.
The following questions now present themselves: What do