Abstract
This chapter is an explication of the sixth section (“Resistance to the Resisters”) of “The Freudian Thing.” This section is devoted to developing a powerful critique of ideas about “defenses” and “resistances” originating with Anna Freud’s 1936 The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense. Underestimating the expressive potency of unconscious truths, Anna-Freud-inspired ego psychologists fail and/or refuse to see and interpret the returns of the repressed that occur in and through analysands’ very efforts to defend against or resist the repressed. This section’s title indicts these analysts for thereby “resisting” the unconscious, with Lacan calling for resistance against these resisters. He relatedly rebuts ego-psychological notions about the role of the analysand’s ego in the analytic process.
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Johnston, A. (2017). Resistance to the Resisters. In: Irrepressible Truth. The Palgrave Lacan Series. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57514-8_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57514-8_6
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Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-57513-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-57514-8
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