Resistances and Obstructions: Their Distinction in Psychoanalytic Treatment

Although traditional psychoanalysis has defined resistance principally as a defensive function of conflict, when Freud was developing his ideas about resistance he regularly acknowledged the contribution made by constitutional or hereditary factors to its composition. He first baptized the term in his case study, “Frauline Elizabeth Von R,” where he referred to “the resistance offered by the patient in the reproduction of her memories” (Breuer and Freud, 1893-1895, p. 154). He then expanded its meaning to “whatever interrupts the progress of analytic work is a resistance” (Freud, 1900, p. 517). By 1912, Freud took pains to correct the impression that he intended to minimize hereditary or constitutional influences. “I take this opportunity of defending myself against the mistaken charge of having denied the importance of innate (constitutional) factors because I have stressed that of infantile impressions” (Freud, 1912, p. 99, note 2). He later elaborated on the idea that nondynamic factors may be used in a given resistance. “It cannot be disputed that in the course of analysis various events may occur, the responsibility for which cannot be laid upon the patient's intentions. … Resistance shows itself unmistakably in the readiness with which he accepts an occurrence of this kind or the exaggerated use which he makes of it” (Freud, 1900, p. 517). In 1937 Freud quite specifically spelled out his belief that an individual's neurobiological constitution is as substantively and en-duringly responsible in shaping a given resistance as the individual's unconscious psychological patterns of defense. “The properties of