The self-and-world construct system
James Bugental's The Art of the Psychotherapist (1987) is a book for working therapists. Its tenth chapter is called "A Basic Approach to the Resistance". It closes the part of the book about getting greater depth, and it is where Bugental introduces a phrase he returns to often: the self-and-world construct system.
His earlier chapters, on levels of communication and on presence, have their own page: presence in psychotherapy. This one is about what happens when a conversation gets close to something that matters.
Why a person resists
The chapter opens with a plain premise. A person comes to life-changing therapy to change her life. What she brings to be "worked on" is her way of being alive. And that way of being alive, Bugental writes, is the basis of her sense of who she is and what her world is, far more than she realizes.
The next step follows almost by itself. When therapy reaches that far, the client feels her identity and her world under threat, which is to say her life.
"Not unreasonably, the client resists the therapeutic effort."
— James F. T. Bugental, The Art of the Psychotherapist (New York: Norton, 1987), chapter 10, "A Basic Approach to the Resistance"
The whole chapter rests on "not unreasonably". Resistance is not the client's fault. It is what a person does when the ground she stands on is being moved.
A picture of oneself and of the world
Later in the chapter Bugental steps back from clinical detail to explain what is being defended. People live in two worlds at once, he writes, the subjective and the objective. They are always trying to connect them. One of the main ways they do it is by building and tending a system of ideas about who they are and what the world is like. He calls it the self-and-world construct system.
When the system fits both inner and outer reality, life tends to work out. When the fit is poor, the result is anxiety and other distress.
His example is simple. Suppose I see myself as a generous, loving person who cares about others. As long as my experience confirms it, all is well. But then I fly into a rage at one of my children. Or I take unfair advantage of someone. The experience does not match the way I define myself, and I have to do something with it.
Not the same as hostility
Bugental is careful to separate resistance from something it is often confused with. Resistance, he writes, is not client opposition, antagonism or hostility.
A client may argue with the therapist's interpretations loudly and with full presence. By his definition, that client is not resisting. A client may be furious with the therapist and say so plainly. That is not resistance either.
What he means by the word is quieter. It is the way a person keeps the conversation away from what would shake her picture of herself and her world. It can look agreeable. It can be polite, cooperative, even eager. What it protects is a way of living.
More than the defended part
A figure caption in the chapter states that every form of resistance turns out to be a structure in the client's self-and-world construct system. Bugental goes further.
The system as a whole, he points out, is much broader than the part that resists. Seen this way, it has a constructive, life-serving side, and the resistant parts are only parts.
He shows this with a client he calls Nan, the youngest child in a family marked by an early loss. The structures that hold her back have a positive side as well.
What the chapter leaves open
Bugental does not treat resistance as a problem of technique. For him it is where therapy meets the way a person has built a life. The picture of self and world made that life possible, so giving up any part of it feels like a threat, even a part that no longer serves.
What in me is being protected when a conversation comes close?
Epimelea is an app built around the existential school. The conversation carries over from one meeting to the next. The archive is encrypted on the device and belongs to the person who wrote it.
About the app: an AI therapist for long-term therapy
This page is about a school of psychotherapy. It is not medical advice and not emergency help. If you are in danger right now, contact your local emergency number, or find a helpline in your country at findahelpline.com.