The principal importance of compromise formation as an aspect of psychopathology lies in its ability to account for symptom formation. The principal importance of compromise formation in our theory of technique lies in its ability to account for the formation and therapeutic resolution of resistance and therefore its ability to explain therapeutic change. This paper is therefore predicated on the view that the terms conflict, compromise formation, and resistance are conceptually inseparable. This is in sharp contrast to the ideas of those who view psychopathology and conflict as issues which can be separated.

Intrapsychic conflict connotes not just any opposition between two tendencies in the mind, but an opposition between two or more wishes, tendencies, attitudes, or ideas of which at least one is excluded from conscious awareness. Both sides of the conflict may be unconscious, but at least one must be or we are speaking of