resistance

When one tries, in analysis, to bring the repressed impulses back to consciousness, this force, which prevents the repressed from returning, makes itself clearly felt. Freud termed it „resistance”. This resistance can take various forms. Its simplest form is when nothing at all comes to the analysand’s mind as soon as he comes into the vicinity, so to speak, of the repressed material; or when all kinds of things leading away from the repressed content come to his mind; or when he gets angry at the analyst and starts to reject the whole method as nonsense; or when he develops bodily symptoms that prevent him from coming into analysis, and thus spare him to get in touch with the repressed material. ― (1935a: The Social Determinants of Psychoanalytic Theory, in: International Forum of Psychoanalysis, Vol. 9 (No. 3-4, October 2000.)

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