ABSTRACT
In action language, the person performs actions, the meanings or goals of which are several or many and possibly unintegrated or paradoxical. The concept of conflict, especially unconscious conflict, is, of course, central to psychoanalysis. Conflict in the psychoanalytic situation is the source of psychoanalytic psychopathology, the psychoanalytic theory of the therapeutic process, and the psychoanalytic theory of individual development in the family and society. The analyst’s attending carefully and impartially to signs of conflict is an essential feature of the analytic attitude. Metapsychologically, the preceding account would be considered primarily a dynamic formulation of the case, that is, an account of forces in conflict. The factors that constitute conflict are themselves not necessarily unidirectional; nor has every one of these factors necessarily existed unambiguously before being stated in an interpretation, at least not in the form defined by the interpretation.
