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October 28, 1952. A CONTRIBUTION TO THE STUDY OF THE PHENOMENON OF RESISTANCE. Ludwig Eidelberg, M.D.
Resistance is a mechanism which keeps the unconscious parts of the personality from becoming conscious, operating both in and out of analysis. The derivatives of the id do not have to become conscious, but may be discharged through (or in) the unconscious part of the ego. The ego selects for awareness those id derivatives which promise the experience of pleasure, and may block derivatives whose discharge may lead to punishment from either the external world or the superego.
As a result of an unpleasure such as hunger, the child may mobilize the wish to be fed again. Frustrated in this passive wish, the child may become partly active and try to feed itself, playing the role of both mother and child; finally it may develop the wish to play the role of the mother and feed someone else. Similarly, the unpleasure due to increased aggressive tension may mobilize the wish to be forced, or to force oneself, or to force someone else.
Under the pressure of unpleasure resulting from increasing instinctual tension, the total personality acts to restore the original equilibrium. The increased tension is first recognized as a need, and objects used in the past for its gratification are recalled with the resulting mobilization of a wish. A plan of obtaining satisfaction is conceived which leads to the location and securing of the necessary object.
'Wishing' is the first active power of the ego by which it mobilizes the opposite instinct tension, changes an active aim into a passive one, and withdraws the libido or the destrudo from the representations of the external objects or the total personality. In this the ego is limited by the need to achieve a compromise between the id and the superego. Repressing the knowledge of its limitations instead of achieving such a reasonable compromise, the ego is forced to accept a derivative of the id. This is a narcissistic mortificatio