Resistance (psychoanalysis)

In psychoanalysis, resistance is the individual's efforts to prevent repressed drives, feelings or thoughts from being integrated into conscious awareness.^[1]

Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalytic theory, developed the concept of resistance as he worked with patients who suddenly developed uncooperative behaviors during the analytic session. Freud reasoned that an individual that is suffering from a psychological affliction, which in psychoanalytic theory is derived from the presence of repressed illicit impulses or thoughts, may engage in efforts to impede attempts to confront such unconscious impulses or thoughts.^[2]

^ Karen, Horney (1939). New Ways in Psychoanalysis. W. W. Norton & Company. p. 21. ISBN 978-0-393-31230-0. [U]nconscious motivations remain unconscious because we are interested in not becoming aware of them. [...] It implies that if an attempt is made to unearth unconscious motivations we will have to put up a struggle because some interest of ours is at stake. This, in succinct terms, is the concept of 'resistance', which is of paramount value to therapy.
^ Larsen & Buss 2008, p. 696.

[1] Karen, Horney (1939). New Ways in Psychoanalysis. W. W. Norton & Company. p. 21. ISBN 978-0-393-31230-0. [U]nconscious motivations remain unconscious because we are interested in not becoming aware of them. [...] It implies that if an attempt is made to unearth unconscious motivations we will have to put up a struggle because some interest of ours is at stake. This, in succinct terms, is the concept of 'resistance', which is of paramount value to therapy.

[FOOTNOTELarsenBuss2008696-2] Larsen & Buss 2008, p. 696.

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