Addressing the Resistance

Like Feldenkrais, Reich begins by inserting oil into the joints of the armor. The heart can’t be healed until the joints have been oiled. However, in Reich’s case the joints are psychological in nature and the “oil” is focused on confronting the initial resistance in therapy.

This initial confrontation is critical for Dr. Reich. It must precede any in-depth interpretive work (Reich, 1972, p. 29):

. . . interpretations involving deeper probing have to be avoided as long as the first front of the cardinal resistances has not become manifest and been eliminated, regardless of how abundant, clear, and obviously interpretable the material may be. The more material a patient recollects without having produced corresponding resistances, the more circumspect one must become. Faced with the choice of interpreting unconscious contents or taking up evident resistances, the analyst will choose the latter. Our principle is: No interpretation of meaning when a resistance interpretation is still to come.

The reason for this is simple enough. If the analyst offers an interpretation before the dissolution of the germane resistances, the patient will accept the interpretation for reasons related to the transference, in which case he will wholly depreciate its importance at the first sign of a negative bearing, or the resistance will follow afterwards, In either case, the interpretation has forfeited its therapeutic force: it has fizzled out. Such an error is very difficult, if at all possible, to correct. The path which the interpretation must take into the deep unconscious has been blocked off.

Reich (1972, p. 29) goes on to make a telling (and distinctive) point regarding the sequencing of analytic activities:

It is important not to disturb the patient in the unfolding of his “analytic personality” during the first weeks of treatment. Neither should the resistances be interpreted before they have been fully developed and in essence understood by the analyst. Naturally, the moment at which a resistance is interpreted will depend largely upon the analyst’s experience.

The key question becomes: how does the analyst identify the source and nature of the resistance. Usually, it involves both the direct observation of the patient’s behavior as well as the analyst’s interpretation (though not revealing) of underlying psychic dynamics. I first turn to what Reich (1972, p. 30) has to say about the identification of the patient’s source of resistance:

. . . [T]o dissolve the resistance, the analyst must know the unconscious material pertaining to and contained in it, yet he has no way of reaching this material because it is shut off by the resistance. Like the dream, every resistance has a historical meaning (an origin) and a contemporary relevance. The impasse can be penetrated by first divining the contemporary meaning and purpose of the resistance from the contemporary situation (the unfolding of which the analyst has observed) and from the form and mechanisms of the resistance, and then working through it with corresponding interpretations in such a way that the germane infantile material is brought to the surface. It is only with the help of the latter that the resistance can be wholly dissolved. There are of course no rules for the ferreting out of the resistances and the divining of their contemporary meaning. To a large extent, this is a matter of intuition–and here we have the beginning of the non­teachable art of analysis. The less blatant, the more concealed the resistances are (i.e., the more the patient deceives), the more certain the analyst will have to be of his intuitions in order to gain control. In other words, the analyst himself must be analyzed and, over and above this, he must have special gifts.