Resistance Revisited: Disillusionment, Hierarchies and the Brain

• Published in: The American journal of psychoanalysis Vol. 80; no. 2; pp. 133 - 150
• Main Author: Lentz, Joan, S.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Human Sciences Press 01.06.2020; Palgrave Macmillan UK; Palgrave Macmillan
• Subjects: Behavioral Science and Psychology; Brain - physiopathology; Clinical Psychology; Humans; Mental Disorders - physiopathology; Mental Disorders - psychology; Mental Disorders - therapy; Power, Psychological; Psychoanalysis; Psychoanalytic Theory; Psychoanalytic Therapy - methods; Psychology; Psychotherapy; Therapeutic Alliance; Unconscious, Psychology; defense; hierarchies; neuroscience; brain hemispheres; resistance
• ISSN: 0002-9548; 1573-6741
• DOI: 10.1057/s11231-020-09250-2

With the proliferation of new psychoanalytic theories and methods, some concepts, such as resistance and free association, have been cast aside. This paper looks at a pattern of forward motion and retreat that characterizes defense, but with a significant twist. The author maintains that there is an alternation between patients’ novel observations about themselves and their families and a logical sounding, authoritative dismissal of all they had just described. Considerations of left and right hemisphere functioning that echo this clinical pattern, the idea of powerful illusions being shed and the ubiquity of hierarchies are considered. A case for the importance of retaining the concept of resistance—that is, stopping the forward motion of treatment—is considered. Implications for the length of psychoanalytic treatment and the role of authority are discussed.