According to traditional psychoanalysis, when the patient experiences blocks in the process of free association, abruptly changes the topic being discussed, or suddenly goes silent, it probably signals:

Sigmund Freud is considered the father of Psychoanalysis, which is one of the main schools in psychology. According to psychoanalysis, we are driven by unconscious motivations that were created during our early childhood, mostly based on how much our needs were satisfied during this period.

According to psychoanalysis, the unconscious plays a major role in our day-to-day life. Psychoanalysis says that we can access the unconscious in our dreams but also, that by going to psychoanalytic therapy and guided by our therapist, we can access our unconscious needs.

Resistance is one of the behaviors that can occur in therapy and it refers to the oppositional behavior that a client manifests when the therapy is confronting the unconscious defenses that exist in his/her mind. Basically it refers to the behaviors that block the process of therapy (without the client being actually aware of that).

Examples of resistance in therapy can be: arriving late to the sessions, canceling the sessions, changing the topic that is being discussed, blocking the process of free association.