ABSTRACT
In a previous contribution, I described the psychoanalytic process as "a special interactive process between two individuals, the analysand and the analyst. . . . [It] requires that there be two people working together, that there be object relationships, identifications, and transferences" (Weinshel, 1984, p. 67 [this volume, p. 269]). I also suggested that
all patients and all analysts will 'adapt' to the analytic situation in their own characteristic fashion. For both patient and analyst, that adaptation will be determined by the totality of their assets and liabilities, their conflicts and anxieties, the vicissitudes of their drives, their overall defensive repertoire, their motivations for the analytic work, and much more. Inevitably, there will be some impingement on their analytic work, on their capacity to carry out their analytic task; and this will be reflected in that [at least relative] observable we call a resistance. The resistance, together with its successful negotiation by the analyst (most often by interpretation), is the clinical unit of the psychoanalytic process
[p. 69, italics added] [this volume, p. 271].