Emotional conflict
Encyclopedia
"Emotional conflicts and the intervention of the unconscious
Unconscious
Unconscious might refer to:In physiology:* unconsciousness, the lack of consciousness or responsiveness to people and other environmental stimuliIn psychology:...

 are the classical features of...medical psychology
Psychology
Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...

" for C. G. Jung. Equally, 'Freud's concept of emotional conflict as amplified by Anna Freud
Anna Freud
Anna Freud was the sixth and last child of Sigmund and Martha Freud. Born in Vienna, she followed the path of her father and contributed to the newly born field of psychoanalysis...

...Erikson
Erik Erikson
Erik Erikson was a Danish-German-American developmental psychologist and psychoanalyst known for his theory on social development of human beings. He may be most famous for coining the phrase identity crisis. His son, Kai T...

 and others is central in contemporary theories of mental disorder in children, particularly with respect to the development of psychoneurosis'.

Such conflicts in adult life may be defined as the presence in the subconscious
Subconscious
The term subconscious is used in many different contexts and has no single or precise definition. This greatly limits its significance as a definition-bearing concept, and in consequence the word tends to be avoided in academic and scientific settings....

 of different and opposing emotions relating to a situation that has recently taken place or is in the process of being unfolded. They may be accompanied at times by a physical discomfort
Pain
Pain is an unpleasant sensation often caused by intense or damaging stimuli such as stubbing a toe, burning a finger, putting iodine on a cut, and bumping the "funny bone."...

, especially when 'a functional disturbance has become associated with an emotional conflict in childhood', and in particular by tension headaches 'expressing a state of inner tension...[or] caused by an unconscious conflict'.

In childhood development

'The early stages of emotional development are full of potential conflict and disruption'. Infancy and childhood are a time when 'everything is polarised into extremes of love and hate' and when 'totally opposite, extreme feelings about them must be getting put together too. Which must be pretty confusing and painful. It's very difficult to discover you hate someone you love'. Development involves integrating such primitive emotional conflicts, so that 'in the process of integration, impulses to attack and destroy, and impulses to give and share are related, the one lessening the effect of the other', until the point is reached at which 'the child may have made a satisfactory fusion of the idea of destroying the object with the fact of loving the same object'.

Once such primitive relations to the mother[er] have been at least partially resolved, 'in the age period two to five or seven, each normal infant is experiencing the most intense conflicts' relating to wider relationships: 'ideas of love are followed by ideas of hate, by jealousy and painful emotional conflict and by personal suffering; and where conflict is too great there follows loss of full capacity, inhibitions...symptom formation'.

Defences

Defenses against emotional conflict include 'splitting
Splitting
Splitting may refer to:* Splitting * Lumpers and splitters, in classification or taxonomyMathematics* Heegard splitting* Splitting field* Splitting principle* Splitting theorem* Splitting lemma...

 and projection
Projection
Projection, projector, or projective may refer to:* The display of an image by devices such as:** Movie projector** Video projector** Overhead projector** Slide projector** Camera obscura** Projection screen...

. They deal with intrapsychic conflict not by addressing it, but by sidestepping it'. Displacement
Displacement (psychology)
In Freudian psychology, displacement is an unconscious defense mechanism whereby the mind redirects effects from an object felt to be dangerous or unacceptable to an object felt to be safe or acceptable...

 too can help resolve such conflicts: 'If an individual no longer feels threatened by his father but by a horse, he can avoid hating his father; here the distortion way a way out of the conflict of ambivalence
Ambivalence
Ambivalence is a state of having simultaneous, conflicting feelings toward a person or thing. Stated another way, ambivalence is the experience of having thoughts and/or emotions of both positive and negative valence toward someone or something. A common example of ambivalence is the feeling of...

. The father, who had been hated and loved simultaneously, is loved only, and the hatred is displaced onto the bad horse'.

Physical symptoms

Inner emotional conflicts can result in physical discomfort or pain
Pain
Pain is an unpleasant sensation often caused by intense or damaging stimuli such as stubbing a toe, burning a finger, putting iodine on a cut, and bumping the "funny bone."...

, often in the form of tension headaches, which can be episodic or chronic
Chronic (medicine)
A chronic disease is a disease or other human health condition that is persistent or long-lasting in nature. The term chronic is usually applied when the course of the disease lasts for more than three months. Common chronic diseases include asthma, cancer, diabetes and HIV/AIDS.In medicine, the...

, and may last from a few minutes or hours, to days - associated pain being mild, moderate, or severe.

'The physiology of nervous headaches still presents many unsolved problems', as in general do all such 'physical alterations...rooted in unconscious instinctual conflicts'. However physical discomfort or pain without apparent cause may be the way our body
Body
With regard to living things, a body is the physical body of an individual. "Body" often is used in connection with appearance, health issues and death...

 is telling us of an underlying emotional turmoil and anxiety
Anxiety
Anxiety is a psychological and physiological state characterized by somatic, emotional, cognitive, and behavioral components. The root meaning of the word anxiety is 'to vex or trouble'; in either presence or absence of psychological stress, anxiety can create feelings of fear, worry, uneasiness,...

, trigger
Trauma trigger
A trauma trigger is an experience that triggers a traumatic memory in someone who has experienced trauma. A trigger is thus a troubling reminder of a traumatic event, although the trigger itself need not be frightening or traumatic....

ed by some recent event. Thus for example a woman 'may be busy in her office, apparently in good health and spirits. A moment later she develops a blinding headache and shows other signs of distress. Without consciously noticing it, she has heard the foghorn of a distant ship, and this has unconsciously reminded her of an unhappy parting'.

While it is not easy, by relaxing, calming down, and trying to become aware of what recent experience or event could have been the cause of the inner conflict, and then rationally looking at and dealing with the conflicting desires and need
Need
A need is something that is necessary for organisms to live a healthy life. Needs are distinguished from wants because a deficiency would cause a clear negative outcome, such as dysfunction or death. Needs can be objective and physical, such as food, or they can be subjective and psychological,...

s, a gradual dissipation and relief
Relief
Relief is a sculptural technique. The term relief is from the Latin verb levo, to raise. To create a sculpture in relief is thus to give the impression that the sculpted material has been raised above the background plane...

 of the pain may be possible.

In the workplace

With respect to the post-industrial age, 'LaBier
Douglas LaBier
Douglas LaBier is a business psychologist, psychotherapist, and writer. He is the Founder and Director of the Center for Progressive Development, in Washington, D.C. Beginning in the 1970s, his work has focused on identifying the links between positive human development, careers, organizational...

 writes of "modern madness", the hidden link between work and emotional conflict...feelings of self-betrayal, stress and burnout
Burnout
Burnout or burn-out may refer to:*Burnout , a psychological term for a syndrome characterized by long-term exhaustion and diminished interest, especially in one's career*Burnout , when a vehicle's tires are spun so they smoke...

'. His 'idea, which gains momentum in the post-yuppie
Yuppie
Yuppie is a term that refers to a member of the upper middle class or upper class in their 20s or 30s. It first came into use in the early-1980s and largely faded from American popular culture in the late-1980s, due to the 1987 stock market crash and the early 1990s recession...

 late eighties...concludes that real professional success without regret of emotional conflict requires insanity of one kind or another'.

Cultural examples

  • Advice on fiction writing emphasises the 'necessity of creating powerful, emotional conflicts' in one's characters: 'characters create the emotional conflict and the action emerges from the characters'.

  • Shakespeare's sonnets
    Shakespeare's sonnets
    Shakespeare's sonnets are 154 poems in sonnet form written by William Shakespeare, dealing with themes such as the passage of time, love, beauty and mortality. All but two of the poems were first published in a 1609 quarto entitled SHAKE-SPEARES SONNETS.: Never before imprinted. Sonnets 138 and 144...

     have been described as 'implying an awareness of the possible range of human feelings, of the existence of complex and even contradictory attitudes to a single emotion'

  • For Picasso 'the presence of death is always coincident with the taste for life...the superb violence of these emotional transports have led some people to call his work expressionist'.

Further reading

  • Modern Madness", Douglas LaBier : The Hidden Link Between Work and Emotional Conflict
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