One of my favourite psychology books is Karen Horney’s, Our Inner Conflicts. No one explains psychological conflicts better than this German-American psychiatrist does. Horney makes the brilliant point that both sides of an inner conflict are not wanted – a real conflict that is, not just a bad case of indecision over two equally desirable alternatives. She believes a victim of conflict gets hung up on the two opposed “trends” and is thus unable to pursue the outcome they really desire.
Karen Horney explained how both sides of an inner conflict are things we do not want! (Image: public domain.)
Here is how this mechanism gets started.
The about-to-be conflicted individual represses what they truly want (for any number of reasons) and then goes looking for alternatives, all of which are, of course, less desirable than what has been pushed out of sight. The human mind being what it is, the moment we conceive one alternative its opposite immediately springs to mind. Several pairs of opposites may be generated in this way, but eventually one possibility, along with its inevitable opposite, will seem like the most probable choices.
Continue reading “Battling Our Inner Conflicts”
Thomas Cotterill 