ABSTRACT
Sigmund Freud applied one version or another of the model of conflict to the explication of virtually all of the apparently paradoxical and otherwise senseless behaviors that he analyzed. The conflicts whose presence he inferred resulted, according to his analyses, in the repression or other disavowal of one, and sometimes both, poles of the conflict. Freud gives a rational explanation of all of the constituents of the patient's superficially nonsensical symptom. Freud applied the conflict-repression model not only to pathological formations such as neurotic symptoms or other aberrant ones such as dreams, but also to apparently normal but somewhat obscure experiences and behaviors. The appropriateness of Freud's accounts of other phenomena aside, the model of repression does not appear to apply to Freud's thought. The inapplicability of the model of conflict to the thought has consequences for the nature of the thought.
