Abstract
The metaphor of resistance supports a view of psychotherapy as a struggle against patients’ willful opposition. Strategic psychotherapy claims a special efficacy in working with resistant interactions through a shift in metaphor from resistance to the notion of joining. This paper provides a rationale for the application of joining interventions in terms of cognitive attribution theory. The same conservative cognitive processes that give rise to symptoms also result in many of the interactional phenomena of resistance. Attributions of causality and control to self or other lead to cognitive processes of dissonance reduction, reactance, emotional exacerbation, and withdrawal. The broad concept of resistance can then be replaced by a more detailed description of cognitive modes allowing psychotherapists to tailor interventions to the specific cognitive mechanisms that maintain symptoms. The cognitive attributional approach to resistance makes it apparent that there is no need for subterfuge or misdirection in strategic psychotherapy.
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