One of my favorite paragraphs in Creatures of a Day by Irvin Yalom is about resistance. Irvin is seeing a patient named Alvin, a handsome man in his thirties who contacted Irvin to talk about the death of his brother. At some point, Irvin invites Alvin to keep taking the same risks as when he entered therapy, the ones that led to resolving his feelings connected to his brother’s death.
“Why have you backed away from the possibility of intimacy with others? What’s the payoff in living in such isolation?”, Irvin asks.
Alvin answers: “Look, there’s a continuum from private to public. Some folks are extroverts by nature, and some simply prefer to remain private. I guess I’m just at the “private” end of the continuum. I LIKE being alone”.
Their conversation leads to my favorite paragraph:
“There it was. In therapy lingo, RESISTANCE had made its entry. I persevered, though I knew he was digging in his heels. (…) As I thought about our session, I marveled at how quickly things had changed. Until this session, Alvin and I had been allies in every way, yet now, suddenly, we seemed to be on opposing sides.”
The reason I find this paragraph so beautiful is because of its potency. The point of resistance is a highly potent place to find yourself in, not just in therapy but life in general. The real work lies in that point, when the client has projected whatever painful, previously created, meaning, onto the therapist. The client is faced with his own private fears (which is scary). For Alvin to admit to his fear of intimacy, there is something waiting for his attention, something needing to be seen. For the sake of self-preservation (or should I say PERCEIVED self-preservation) resistance kicks in and attempts to save Alvin from the discomfort. That’s why Irvin asked Alvin to keep taking risk.
“Go there,” is Irvin’s request.
Gunhild Archer, MD in Psychology and Counseling 