It is remarkable under what subterfuges these resistances are frequently hidden. “I am distracted today”; “the clock or the piano playing in the next room disturbs me,” they say. I became accustomed to answer to that, “Not at all, you simply struck against something that you do not willingly wish to say. That does not help you at all. Just stick to it.”—The longer the pause between the pressure of my hand and the utterance of the patient, the more suspicious I become, and the more is it to be feared that the patient arranges what comes to his mind, and distorts it in the reproduction. The most important explanations are frequently ushered in as superfluous accessories, just as the princes of the opera who are dressed as beggars. “Something now occurred to me, but it has nothing to do with it. I only tell it to you because you wish to know everything.” With this introduction we usually obtain the long desired solution. I always listen when I hear a patient talk so lightly of an idea. That the pathogenic idea should appear of so little importance on its reappearance is a sign of the successful defense. One can infer from this of what the process of defense consisted. Its object was to make a weak out of a strong idea, that is, to rob it of its affect. Among other signs the pathogenic memories can also be recognized by the fact that they are designated by the patient as unessential, and yet are only uttered with resistance. There are also cases where the patient seeks to disavow the recollections, even while they are being reproduced, with such remarks as these: “Now something occurred to me, but apparently you talked it into me;” or, “I know what you expect to this question, you surely think that I thought of this and that.” An especially clever way of shifting is found in the following expression: “Now something really occurred to me, but it seems to me as if I added it, and that it is not a reproduced thought.”—In all these cases I remain inflexibly firm, I admit none of these distinctions, but explain to the patient that these are only forms and subterfuges of the resistance against the reproduction of a recollection which in spite of all we are forced to recognize.