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Among the many varieties of expression that the patient's transference resistance may assume, there is one which for years has impressed itself upon me as typical, without being accesible to an analysis of its instinctual nature. Now, after the interpretation of this particular form of resistance, which takes the shape of a parapraxia in hearing, has at last been secured, its presentation to the reader is still a problem. For it is as difficult to describe as it was to point it out to the (usually female) patient herself. I shall therefore resort to the same expedient in this communication which I came to employ for the demonstration of her resistive behavior to the patient.
“Let us suppose,” I was accustomed to say, “that you wanted to convey a simple fact, for example, the location of an object, for which a person is looking, to this person. Thus you say to him: “The book is on the table.” That is plain, is it not? and we may assume that it was spoken audibly and distinctly. The person, however, refuses to hear it and responds to your reiteration with but new and more absurd misunderstandings. Thus he renders your conversation with him increasingly unintelligible, until, when he finally does understand you, enough time has elapsed to make it impossible for him to remember to what you have been referring in the first place. The conversation may then resemble the following paradigmatic dialogue:
You: The book is on the table.
Partner: What?
You: The book is on the table.
P: What did you say?
Y: Didn't you hear me? I said: the book is on the table.
P: Did you say the book sits on the table?
Y: No, I said the book is on the table.
P: You said the cook's name is Mabel? I don't know what you mean. We have no cook called Mabel.