If It's Not Resistance, Then What Is It?
And What Do We Do About It?

The concept of “resistance” was introduced into the analytic lexicon to account for the patient’s refusal to accept the analyst’s interpretation of the truths that lie in the patient’s unconscious, the de-repression of which would set the patient free from his neurosis. If we no longer believe there is a truth the patient must accept to overcome his pathology, then “resistance” has lost its meaning as a force opposing the essence of the treatment. To label the patient’s disagreement with the analyst “resistance” is to invoke an authoritarian truth that does not fit the theoretical or clinical reality of today’s psychoanalysis. Nonetheless, there are often times when the patient stands in staunch opposition to the analyst’s interpretations. How do we understand such an impasse in today’s psychoanalytic world from which the analyst’s authority has been eroded? Is there a place for “resistance” in such a world? If not, what replaces “resistance” and how do we understand an impasse between patient and analyst? In this panel, three analysts will address these questions from different theoretical perspectives, and then our fourth member will discuss these approaches to seemingly intractable differences between patient and analyst. 

Our distinguished panel will discuss Resistance from three contemporary theoretical points of view and through discussion of a clinical case example. We encourage the audience to join in the discussion.

Panelists

Peter Shabad, PhD: The Dignity of Subjectivity: Resistance and the Mandate To Change

In this paper, I will explore the nobility and dignity of resistance.  I will briefly summarize how resistance of rebellion and revolution has been a means of declaring one’s freedom to be one’s own subject rather than an object of a controlling external authority.   I will then examine how the ethical privilege of the analyst to be the helping change agent can sometimes deprive the patient of his/her subjectivity and will to change.  The patient then must resist a “mandate to change” in order to assert his/her dignity of subjectivity.  I will use a clinical vignette to illustrate how a patient’s inertia may be viewed as resistance against external authority and the beginning of a self-healing attempt to give birth to his/her own freedom of self-determination.

Joyce Slochower, PhD: Whose Resistance is it Anyway?

I revisit the concept of resistance from a relational perspective.  When a patient chronically rejects our therapeutic offerings, we feel we’re in a power struggle more than a dialogue.  Rather than rejecting the notion of resistance as outdated,  I consider how it can be engaged to characterize both patient and analyst’s experience of the other at moments of impasse.  Our patient's resistance precipitates our own resistance (or vice versa): both her and our own reflective space collapse.  I consider how this conceptualization shifts our way of working. Exploring moments of resistance that emerge outside the realm of enactment, I use a clinical vignette to suggest that there may be times when resistance un-interpreted is a good thing, clinically speaking. 

 Frank Summers, PhD: From Resistance to Analytic Truth

This paper illuminates the dilemma posed by the traditional understanding of “resistance” which requires a belief in “objective truth” that most analysts now consider questionable.  But, if the patient is not “resisting” when rejecting the analyst’s understanding, what is she doing?  It is this perplexing question that this paper confronts and purports to resolve by bringing to light the inextricable link between the epistemological and clinical dilemmas.   Phenomenological philosophy, the epistemology that fits for psychoanalysis, will be employed to show that neither the “objectivists” nor “relativists” have a workable epistemological position for understanding the other’s experience.  A third way will be depicted and used to illuminate what the patient is doing when she is opposing what the analyst believes to be obvious.  This analysis will be used to show the concept of analytic truth and how that replaces the notion of “objective truth” for the analytic process.  

Discussant

Marsha Levy-Warren, PhD: Resistance: Hard to Live Without It

This paper discusses the other three presentations. It shows overlap and difference among them, and raises questions about their inter-relationships. It also takes the position that resistance is a concept that has historical and current meaning, especially as viewed from the perspective of a psychoanalytic theory of development.

Clinical Presenter 

Linda L. Michaels, PsyD, MBA

Register Now!Fees 
CAPP Members & ISPP Faculty and Staff: $100 (early) /  $140 (late)
Non-CAPP Members: $150 (early) / $190 (late)
Students: $25 (no fee change for registration after 2/18/18) 
*** Late registration begins on 2/18/18

  Fee includes 4 CE's for PhDs, PsyDs, LCSWs, & LCPCs

Continuing education:  This program, when attended in its entirety, is available for 4.0 Continuing Education. The Chicago Association for Psychoanalytic Psychology is licensed by the State of Illinois to sponsor continuing education credits for Licensed Clinical Psychologists and The Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis will be sponsoring continuing education credits for Licensed Clinical Social Workers, Licensed Professional Counselors, and Licensed Clinical Professional Counselors. CAPP maintains responsibility for this program and its content. 

 To receive these credits a completed evaluation form must be turned in at the end of the presentation. No continuing education credit will be given for attending part of the presentation. If participants have special needs, we will attempt to accommodate them. Please address questions, concerns and any complaints to Theresa Gregoire, PsyD, at support@cappchicago.org. There is no commercial support for this program nor are there any relationships between the CE Sponsor, presenting organization, presenter, program content, research, grants, or other funding that could reasonably be construed as conflicts of interest. CAPP is a local chapter of Div. 39 of APA.  For full details and disclosures regarding CE provision please go our website: http://www.cappchicago.org/about-capp/continuing-education-provider/

Presenters 

Marsha H. Levy-Warren, PhD is a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst who writes, teaches, lectures, and consults both nationally and internationally. She is the author of The Adolescent Journey (Jason Aronson, 1996; reissued by Rowman and Littlefield, 2004), and numerous articles on clinical and developmental theory, adolescence, and various aspects of culture.

She is Past-President of The Contemporary Freudian Society (CFS),  a component society of the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA), and  a Training and Supervising Psychoanalyst in The CFS, Confederation of Independent Psychoanalytic Societies (CIPS),  and the IPA. She is currently Director of The Child/Adolescent Training Program at CFS. She also is an Adjunct Clinical Associate Professor of Psychology and a Clinical Consultant in New York University's Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis, and on the editorial boards of Psychoanalytic Psychology and The Journal of Child, Infant, and Adolescent Psychotherapy. Dr. Levy-Warren has a clinical practice with adolescents and adults, and a consulting practice with parents on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

Linda L. Michaels, PsyD, MBA is a clinical psychologist in private practice in Chicago, working with individual adults and couples.  Presently she is the Co-Chair of the Psychotherapy Action Network (PsiAN), dedicated to advocating for relationship-based, open-ended psychotherapy.  For the last 10 years, she has served as a Council member of the Chicago Association for Psychoanalytic Psychology.  She is a graduate of the Adult Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy program at the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis, and was the Chief Fellow at Northwestern University’s Family Institute, where she completed her postdoctoral training.  In addition to her doctorate degree in clinical psychology from the Illinois School of Professional Psychology, Linda has an MBA from Wharton, and a BA, Summa cum Laude, from Harvard.

Peter Shabad, PhD is Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Northwestern University Medical School. He is on the Core Faculty of the Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis (CCP) and Faculty of the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis. Dr. Shabad is co-editor of The Problem of Loss and Mourning: Psychoanalytic Perspectives (IUP, 1989) and is the author of Despair and the Return of Hope: Echoes of Mourning in Psychotherapy (Aronson, 2001). Dr. Shabad is currently working on a new book entitled Seizing The Vital Moment: Passion, Shame, and Mourning to be published Routledge. He is the author of numerous papers and book chapters on diverse topics such as the psychological implications of death, loss and mourning, giving and receiving, shame, parental envy, resentment, spite, and regret.   Dr. Shabad has a private practice in Chicago in psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic therapy. 

Joyce Slochower, PhD, ABPP, is Professor Emerita of Psychology at Hunter College & the Graduate Center, CUNY.  Joyce is faculty and supervisor at the NYU Postdoctoral Program, the Steven Mitchell Center, the National Training Program of NIP (all in New York), Philadelphia Center for Relational Studies in Philadelphia and the Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California in San Francisco.   Joyce has published over 85 articles on various aspects of psychoanalytic theory and technique.  Second Editions of her two books, Holding and Psychoanalysis: A Relational Perspective (1996) and Psychoanalytic Collisions (2006), were released in 2014 by Routledge. She is co-Editor, with Lew Aron and Sue Grand, of the forthcoming books “De-idealizing relational theory: a Critique from within” and “Decentering Relational Theory: a Comparative Critique.  She is in private practice in New York City where she sees individuals and couples. 

Frank Summers, PhD, ABPP, is a Professor of Clinical Psychiatry and the Behavioral Sciences, Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University, former president of the Division of Psychoanalysis, American Psychological Association, supervising and training analyst, Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis and the Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis.  He has published four books, the most recent of which, The Psychoanalytic vision: The Experiencing Subject, Transcendence, and The Therapeutic Process, won the Gradiva Awared  for the best psychoanalytic book of 2013.  His honors include the Hans Strupp Award for contributions to psychoanalysis, the Distinguished Educator Award from the International Federation for Psychoanalytic Education, and the Leadership Award from the Division of Psychoanalysis.  An associate editor of Psychoanalytic Dialogues and a member of the editorial board of Psychoanalytic Psychology, Dr. Summers is author of more than 60 papers in professional journals and book chapters as well as dozens of presentations and workshops at both national and international meetings.  He has also taught psychoanalytic theory and therapy in courses and workshops across the country and internationally.  Dr. Summers maintains a private practice of psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy in Chicago, Illinois.  A complete list of his publications, presentations, and leadership positions can be found at www.franksummersphd.com

Learning Objectives 
At the conclusion of this program, participants will be able to:
1. Describe the link between the theory of resistance and psychoanalytic epistemology. 
2. Describe specific constructive aspects of resistance.
3. Describe the concept of resistance in the context of a relational psychoanalytic framework.
4. Apply a developmental perspective to their understanding of resistance in treatment thus improving outcomes.

References
Adler, E. and Bachant, J.L. (1998). Intrapsychic and Interactive Dimensions of Resistance. Psychoanal. Psychol., 15:451-479.

Aron, L. (2001).  A meeting of minds.  New York: Routledge.Bromberg, P. (2006) Awakening the Dreamer.  Mahwaw, JC, Analytic Press.

Dostoevsky, F. (1864). Notes from the underground, trans. C. Garnett.  New York: Dover. 1992.

Heidegger, M. (1962) Being and Time.  New York: MacMillan (original work published 1926).

Heidegger, M. (2001) The Zooikon Seminars.  Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. (original work published 1987).

Hoffman, I.Z. (1991). Discussion: Toward a Social-Constructivist View of the Psychoanalytic Sit... Psychoanal. Dial., 1:74-105.

Husserl, E. (1931) Ideas.  New York: Collier (original work published 1913).

Shabad, P.  (2010). The suffering of passion:  Metamorphoses and the embrace of the stranger,  Psychoanalytic Dialogues 20: 710–729.

Shabad, P. (2011).  The dignity of creating: The patient’s contribution to the reachable-enough analyst. Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 21: 619-629.

This presentation is co-sponsored by 
The Illinois School of Professional Psychology &
The Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis