ABSTRACT
This chapter shows how various influences led to contemporary conflict theory. Within contemporary conflict theory, Jacob Arlow, D. Boesky, and T. Jacobs are among those who have contributed to the expansion and modification of the current clinical status of countertransference. Contemporary conflict theory approaches mental life and all psychic phenomena as the expression of intrapsychic forces in conflict and the resulting compromises. The thrust of contemporary conflict theory has been to refine and amend S. Freud’s hypothesis in order to achieve a fuller appreciation of the range and scope of conflicts and compromise formations in mental life and to develop a more powerful psychoanalytic treatment approach. An important controversy among proponents of contemporary conflict theory concerns the technical role of the patient–analyst relationship. Contemporary conflict theory, building on the foundations of ego psychology and a spectrum of psychoanalytic theories, is an evolutionary, as opposed to revolutionary, viewpoint, since it takes Freud’s conflict psychology as a conceptually and clinically adequate perspective.
