Art of Listening by Erich Fromm

Author:Erich Fromm [Fromm, Erich]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4804-0198-3
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2013-01-17T00:13:00+00:00

About the Recognition of Resistance

Perhaps the most important thing in analysis is the recognition of resistance. There’s one analyst who recognized this resistance first and most thoroughly: Wilhelm Reich. That is in fact his main contribution to analysis. I think his other contributions are very doubtful or questionable. He made another contribution which is equally important—that he was, after Georg Groddeck, the only one who saw the importance of loosening up the body in order to overcome repression. When he wrote his book Character analysis (W. Reich, 1933), he emphasized this.

Resistance is one of the trickiest things, not only in analysis, but in the life of everybody who tries to grow, who tries to live. Man seems to have two very strong tendencies. One is to move forward, starting you might say from the beginning of the birth of a child, the impulse to be impelled to get out of the womb, but at the same time a great fear of all that is new, all that is different, you might say a fear of freedom, a fear of the risk and an almost equally strong tendency to recoil, to go back, not to move forward. This fear of the new, this fear of that to which one is not accustomed, this fear of that which is not certain because one has never experienced it, all this fear is expressed in resistances, in various maneuvers to prevent one from moving forward, from doing something daring.

Resistance is by no means a problem of analysis only. Most problems in fact which are discussed in analysis like resistance or transference are much more important as general human problems. As analytic problems they are relatively restricted, so, how many people are analyzed? But in general human terms resistance and transference are among the most powerful emotional forces which exist.

We are never trickier than when we are rationalizing our resistances. Not the least of all resistance is to get better; any improvement is to be looked at with great suspicion, rather than with satisfaction and joy. Because very often the improvement serves only to begin the compromise, to have satisfied oneself: “You see I’m not as sick as I was,” but at the same time now it’s enough, to prevent one from the decisive step which could radically solve the problem by going forward. So it is very important to be skeptical towards improvements. Defeats are better than successes, provided as Nietzsche said: “What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger” (“Was uns nicht umbringt, macht uns stärker”(F. Nietzsche, 1889, Nr. 8). There are certain defeats which are fatal but on the whole success is the one most dangerous thing in which people fail. And it usually serves as a resistance to go further.

Now resistance has of course many other forms; one person expresses resistance by flooding the analyst with dreams, so from then on one listens to dreams for years; they are the good dreamers and nothing is ever analyzed because the dream is very alienated; one analyses the dream but one doesn’t analyze the person.

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