ABSTRACT
This chapter describes some psychopathological macro-phenomena which characterise the change in patients during these last thirty years; and the consequently changed conditions in the work of contemporary analysts, who are increasingly dealing with patients’ difficulty and reluctance in accepting their basic dependence inside the object relationship. Commitment, the rhythm of the sessions, contractual obligation, and the perception of the complexity and depth of the analytic relationship today, much more than in the past, arouse their mistrust towards their engagement with psychoanalysis. Factors encouraging and strengthening new resistances today are examined: ways of growing up in early childhood, the precariousness and liquidity of family ties, omnipotence and not-separateness illusions inspired by the Internet, substance abuse, valorisation of narcissistic auto-nomistic ideals, etc. Correspondingly, psychoanalysis too is changing.
