ABSTRACT
As a theoriser Freud was attracted to dualistic explanations: he divided problems into two opposing forces or two antagonistic terms. Conflict is at the centre of psychoanalytic thinking – the battle between conflicting conscious and unconscious desires causes the repression which leads to neurosis. Children both love and hate their parents – violent and erotic feelings often accompany each other in infancy. If these emotions are not satisfactorily resolved, the contending forces set the grounds for the adult’s psychic difficulties, as we have seen in Freud’s case histories. The simultaneous existence of opposing emotions and urges is a consistent theme of psychoanalytic theory (see the definition of ambivalence, p. 53).
