In an article with a dramatic title, "The Death of Resistance," de Shazer (1984) claimed that the field's dominant conceptualization of client resistance more accurately represents a point of view, or construction of reality, of practitioners than it does any aspect of objective reality. Thinking along very different lines, he proposed that what practitioners took to be signs of resistance were instead the unique ways in which clients chose to cooperate. For example, clients who do not follow through on the therapeutic or problem-solving tasks assigned by their practitioners are not resisting but simply cooperating by telling their practitioners that the tasks do not fit their way of doing things (de Shazer, 1985, p. 21; 1991, p. 126).
Just as the notion of resistance flows from the assumptions of the medical model, de Shazer's reconceptualization of resistance as a form of cooperation is also bound to his assumptions. De Shazer assumes that clients are competent to figure out what they want (and need) and how to go about getting it. The practitioner's responsibility is to assist clients in uncovering these competencies and marshaling them to create more satisfying and productive lives for themselves, if that is what they choose to do.
Once we accept the notion of client competence, we are left with a humbling and challenging conclusion: What we once thought of as client resistance is more accurately regarded as practitioner resistance. Impasses and apparent failures in our work do not result from clients' resistance to our best professional efforts to make them well. Rather, they result from our failure to listen to clients and take seriously what they tell us.
Peter de Jong & Insoo Kim Berg, "Getting Started: How to Pay Attention to What the Client Wants" in Interviewing for Solutions (3rd ed.) (2008), p. 72
