Resistance as traditionally defined is a concept that has outlived its clinical usefulness. It is unlikely that patients have unconscious wishes to maintain a state of suffering. If this process occurs at all, it is generally conscious and understandable from a cognitive viewpoint. As Meichenbaum (1977) has suggested, resistance is the failure of the therapist to correctly understand the reality of the patient. When ... patients do not perform, it is because the magnitude of the task is too large, the consequences of failure too great, or because of skepticism about the usefulness of the task in the first place.

The therapist should take full responsibility for the patient's performance failures. Asking the patient to perform a behavior is the therapist's responsibility, even if it might help the patient. The therapist is in a better position to accept failure and can adopt a "one down" strategy with the patient. This empowers the patient with responsibility for providing vital perceptual information to the therapist.