ABSTRACT
This chapter demonstrates the value of the concept compromise formation in working with resistances to analysis. It discusses some of the things an analyst can do to help a patient who is able but reluctant to pay the analyst’s fee at the beginning of an analysis. The chapter reviews some of the pertinent literature on technique and then outlines author's own thinking about how to understand and interpret this reluctance so that the patient can then experience a standard psychoanalysis. One should look beyond the patient’s illness and form an estimate of his whole personality; those patients who do not possess a reasonable degree of education and a fairly reliable character should be refused. Considering patients' reluctance as “enactment resistances” reflects the evolution of analytic thinking about activity. There is an “established wisdom” associated with the ideal conception of analysis that suggests gratifying enactments on the part of analysts establish unanalysable situations.
