Abstract
This article focuses on Sigmund Freud’s presentation of the concept of resistance in Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis (Freud 1989c) and on James E. Dittes’s employment of this concept in The Church in the Way (Dittes 1967). It takes particular note of Freud’s view that the patient’s resistance may contribute to the success of the therapeutic process if skillfully handled by the therapist, as well as Dittes’s view that instead of condemning laypersons’ expressions of resistance, the minister should recognize that they are a sign of vitality and testify to laypersons’ skills, sensitivity, and commitment to the church and its fundamental purposes. The article concludes with a brief consideration of the relationship between resistance and resourcefulness (Capps 2014).
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Notes
In his address on “Turnings in the Ways of Psychoanalytic Therapy” (Freud 1963b, pp. 181-194) delivered before the Fifth International Psychoanalytic Congress in 1918, Freud commented on the fact that with these particular patients there is often “an interminable protraction of the treatment” due to the fact that there is “a great deal coming to light without its effecting any change in them” (p. 189). He suggests that in such cases “the correct technique can only be to wait until the treatment itself has become a compulsion, and then with this counter-compulsion forcibly to suppress the compulsion of the disease” (p. 189). In effect, the new resistance challenges the old resistance.
As the lectures were delivered in 1917 before there were female analysts, these illustrations reflect the fact that the analyst in both illustrations is male.
Freud provides an illustration of the relationship between resistance and repression in Five Lectures on Psycho-Analysis (Freud 1989a), the lectures that he delivered at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1909. After citing the case of Frȁulein Elisabeth von R., originally reported in Studies in Hysteria (Breuer and Freud 1957, pp. 135–181), he says: “Perhaps I may give you a more vivid picture of repression and of its necessary relation to resistance, by a rough analogy derived from our actual situation at the present moment. Let us suppose that in this lecture-room and among this audience, whose exemplary quiet and attentiveness I cannot sufficiently commend, there is nevertheless someone who is causing a disturbance and whose ill-mannered laughter, chattering and shuffling with his feet are distracting my attention from my task. I have to announce that I cannot proceed with my lecture; and thereupon three or four of you who are strong men stand up and, after a short struggle, put the interrupter outside the door. So now he is ‘repressed’, and I can continue my lecture. But in order that the interruption shall not be repeated, in case the individual who has been expelled should try to enter the room once more, the gentlemen who have put my will into effect place their chairs up against the door and thus establish a ‘resistance’ after the repression has been accomplished. If you will now translate the two localities concerned into psychical terms as the ‘conscious’ and the ‘unconscious’, you will have before you a fairly good picture of the process of repression” (Freud 1989a, pp. 23–24). Thus, resistance is symbolized by the chairs set up against the door. What Freud does not comment on here is the resistance suggested in the distracting behavior of the person who is expelled. In later writings, especially “The Resistances to Psychoanalysis” (Freud 1963a, pp. 252–262), originally published in 1925, Freud employed the theory of resistance to interpret the negative reaction of the medical community to psychoanalysis. Because the behavior of the distracting individual caused Freud to interrupt his lecture, this behavior may perhaps be viewed as an illustration of this form of resistance. But his behavior may be an indication of the fact that Freud has said something to which he (the one who interrupts) is personally attracted, so much so that he needs to defend against its influence or impact by means of his ill-mannered behavior.
The Church in the Way was written before the use of gender-inclusive language became standard practice. I have not attempted to bring the book up-to-date by editing quotations from it. His second book, Minister on the Spot (Dittes 1970), does not use gender-inclusive language, but his third book, Bias and the Pious (Dittes 1973), does.
Dittes suggests that some laypersons’ fondness for the back pews may be symbolic of this disguise. Their distance from the altar and pulpit may suggest that they are “indifferent and proud, stubborn and unconcerned, uninformed and uninvolved,” but is it not also possible that it reveals that they are “all too apprehending and apprehensive, though perhaps not consciously so, of the meaning of the word and the altar”? (Dittes 1967, pp. vii-viii). Is the space between these laypersons and the “front” of the church “an exasperating emptiness (as the minister usually sees it), a gap to be closed by instructing and cajoling?” Or is the distance “defined and charged by the vital encounter” between them and their “awesome perception of God’s claims,” claims that keep them bound to the church, but at a distance? “If the latter, the distance represents a vitality of engagement which is to be celebrated and captured” (p. viii). Thus, this fondness for the back pews constitutes a different expression of resistance to that of Freud’s illustration of the disruptive audience member during his lecture on psychoanalysis (see footnote). But, in both cases, the meaning of this behavior is not self-evident. As Dittes suggests, it may “represent a vitality of engagement which is to be celebrated and captured” (p. viii).
In light of the Group for New Directions in Pastoral Theology’s theme of resistance, resilience, and resourcefulness, it is noteworthy that Dittes (1967) introduces the theme of resourcefulness and cites the work of Carl Rogers in this regard. In a section of his chapter titled “Freedom From the World” on freedom in trust and acceptance, he notes that it does not require elaborate or abstract theory to understand how the “attitude of trust experienced by the patient, perhaps for the first time in his life, can serve gradually to free him from past defenses, habits, and postures. As he slowly comes to believe that this trust is genuinely available to him regardless of what posture he presents to the therapist, he gradually peeks from behind the masks, flexes some muscles without protective armor, and tries something new—“being himself.” In such freedom a person may venture to make new use of old resources or to discover new resources, including those within himself, within his social environment, and within his religious faith. He can come more nearly to being ‘that self he truly is’” (p. 92, emphasis added). Dittes indicates in a footnote that the phrase “that self he truly is” is from Carl Rogers’s On Becoming a Person (1961). I will return to the issue of resourcefulness in the conclusion.
Adam and Eve’s hiding from God may be viewed in the same way, as an expression of awe that betrays an ambivalent feeling of attraction and avoidance, respect and aversion. Dittes does not cite any texts in his discussion of “awe,” but there are resonances between his discussion of “awe” and Rudolf Otto’s The Idea of the Holy (Otto 1958), especially Otto’s discussion of “the element of awefulness” in his chapter titled “Mysterium Tremendum” (pp. 13–19).
In effect, the resistance in this case is religiously motivated, and, this being the case, this view of resistance justifies the classification of The Church in the Way as “an application of psychology of religion to problems of pastoral theology” (Dittes 1967, p. x).
Also, Dittes’s second book, Minister on the Spot (1970), may be viewed as a sequel to The Church in the Way in that it focuses on ministers’ personal struggles with their call to ministry and how they are fulfilling it. His third book, Bias and the Pious: The Relationship between Prejudice and Religion (Dittes 1973), addresses the fact that churches are especially resistant to change with regard to the Civil Rights struggle. His specific recommendations for how a minister may “undermine” racial prejudice by addressing the perceived need for it are similar to those he offers in The Church in the Way to ministers who confront resistance (see Capps 2003).
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Capps, D. Resistance in the Local Church: A Psychoanalytic Perspective. Pastoral Psychol 64, 581–601 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11089-015-0647-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11089-015-0647-3