Chapter 4. Resistance

Introduction

In the corresponding chapter in Vol. 1 we described the classification of different forms of resistance; in this chapter, from the perspective of analytic technique, we focus on the regulatory function that resistance fulfills in the relationship.

The extension of the theory of transference that we described in Vol. 1 (Sect. 2.5), has obviously had a significant impact on the theory of resistance that corresponds to it. Although the differing views of well-known contemporary analysts remind us of the controversies between A. Freud, Fenichel, M. Klein, and Reich in the 1930s, at least in their wording, there are nevertheless numerous signs that resistance phenomena are today increasingly being viewed in terms of the relationship. This change was made explicit in a public discussion between Sandler and Rangell, held at the Madrid psychoanalytic congress in 1983. The following passage contains the essential points of Sandler's arguments:

It seems clear that the introduction and description of these object-related processes, particularly the object-related defences, reflected a major new dimension in the analytic work and in the concept of transference. The analysis of the here-and-now of the analytic interaction began to take precedence, in terms of the timing of interpretations, over reconstruction of the infantile past. If the patient used defences within the analytic situation which involved both him and the analyst, this was seen as transference, and increasingly became a primary focus of attention for the analyst. The question “What is going on now?” came to be asked before the question “What does the patient's material reveal about his past?”

In other words, the analytic work became more and more focused, in Britain certainly, on the patient's use of the analyst in his unconscious wishful fantasies and thoughts as they appeared in the present - i. e. in the transference as it is explicitly or implicitly understood by most analysts, in spite o