A patient in psychodynamic therapy has been coming late to the last few sessions and complaining in the session that he has nothing to talk about. His therapist points out that they were making very rapid progress into uncovering some of the difficult thoughts and feelings the patient had about his parents up until several weeks ago. This recent change in the patient’s behavior is an example of what therapeutic principle?
Correct Answer: Resistance
Description: Freud noticed that patients in spite of their suffering and their ove desire to change tended to cling to their symptoms and resisted the analyst's effos to produce insight. He called these powerful internal forces that oppose change resistance. Resistance takes place at any point in the treatment and paicularly when unacceptable impulses or thoughts threaten to come into consciousness or a maladaptive defense mechanism is challenged. Resistance can manifest itself in many different ways, including withholding impoant thoughts from the analyst, falling silent during sessions, forgetting appointments, forgetting to pay the analyst, falling asleep during session, and considering dropping out of treatment. The possible manifestations of resistance are countless and depend on the patient's defense mechanisms and personality. In other words, the patient's intrapsychic defenses manifest as resistance in the context of his or her interpersonal relationship with the analyst. Freud thought that resistance should be uncovered by the analyst but not challenged or interpreted. Modern analysts believe that resistance should be analyzed through the patient's free associations suppoed by the analyst's observations.
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