Our inner conflict

"Our Inner Conflict" Reading Notes

Author:Karen. Honey

Freud was pessimistic about human neurotic conflict and its treatment because he did not believe in the good side of human nature and the potential for human growth. He believed that man was doomed to suffer and destroy, and that the instinct to drive man to action could only be controlled or at best "sublimated." But the author's belief is: "Man has both the ability and the need to develop his potential possibilities to make himself better..." "Man can change himself and constantly change himself as long as he lives." This difference is precisely the author's transcendence of Freud, but it is also at this point that the weakness of the author's theory and the limitations of the proposed solution to man's inner conflict are exposed.

Undoubtedly, this book is a mentor and friend to guide us to improve ourselves and live in harmony with others.

Poets and philosophers of all ages know that the mentally disturbed are never people with a calm personality and a good balance of thought, but people who suffer from inner conflicts. In modern terms, every neurosis, regardless of its symptoms, is a personality neurosis. Therefore, we must work theoretically and in therapy to better understand the neurotic personality structure.

Very few people can make a drastic trade-off because our feelings and beliefs are confused. Perhaps, in the end, it is also because most of us do not have a strong sense of security and happiness, so we cannot give up.

When conflict is a fundamental question of life, it is even more difficult to recognize it and resolve it. But as long as we have enough dynamism, we can, in principle, face up to and resolve conflicts. Educational work can greatly help us to gain more understanding of ourselves and develop our own beliefs. When we recognize the significance of the factors associated with choice, we can see the goal of our struggle and find the right path in our lives.

Any neurotic conflict shows that there is a similar conflict between the drive of the contradiction, and it shows that the drive is unconscious and compulsive. In this way, the patient is always unable to resolve the contradiction on his own.

When a child is close to others, he is willing to face up to his helplessness, and although he is also estranged from himself and has doubts, he still wants to win the warmth or attachment of others. Only then does he feel safe with others. If there is a dispute between the people in his family, he is on the strongest side, and by aligning himself with the stronger side, he gains a sense of belonging, a sense of support, which makes him feel that he is no longer as weak and powerless as in the past, so isolated and helpless.

Self-isolation does have great benefits. It is significant that in all eastern philosophies, solitude is seen as the foundation necessary to attain a higher spiritual realm. Of course, we cannot confuse this willingness with neurotic loneliness. In the former, isolation is a voluntary choice of the person and is considered the best way to achieve self-improvement, and the choice of the lonely person may also have a different life if he wishes. In the latter, the situation is different, and neurotic conflict is not something to choose, but a compulsion within, the only way of life for patients. Neuroses usually deprive the mind of peace, self-isolation can lead to inner peace and quiet, and the greater the sacrifice, the greater the peace of mind.

It is not uncommon for one falsehood to lead to another, and the second falsehood needs a third falsehood to support it, and so on until one is entangled in a cobweb of falsehood and unable to escape.

In complex social systems, people have largely become a small screw, the alienation of the self is almost everywhere, and the value of human beings has plummeted.

In psychoanalytic work, since Freud regarded psychology as a natural science and abandoned its moral values, the psychiatrist became as blind as the patient, and neither could see this contradiction.

No matter how hard the neurotic person tries, the basic contradiction remains, only deformed, weakened in some ways and strengthened in others. However, because of the vicious circle inherent in this process, the conflict has only become more serious.

Living with conflict also means, above all, a great waste of vitality, not only of the conflict itself, but also of the various wrong ways of trying to resolve it. When a person is fundamentally divided, he cannot concentrate his energies on anything, he always tries to achieve two or even three contradictory goals at the same time. This means that he is either distracted or has thwarted his own efforts.

Conflicting moral values can also be seen in fundamental conflicts. Despite the patient's best efforts to reconcile them, they continue to affect him.

The entanglement and strife of neurotic conflict tendencies inevitably produces a sense of hopelessness. The more serious the conflict, the less hope there is. This hopeless pain may be buried deep within the patient.

Despair is the ultimate product of conflict, rooted in the patient's abandonment of hope of keeping the body and mind united from being divided. Severe neuroses cause this state.

In the end, patients who have lost hope become destructive and at the same time try to seek compensation through compensatory sex. In my opinion, this is the sadistic trend.

Because Freud saw sadistic tendencies as an adult instinct, the focus of psychoanalysis was focused on so-called sadistic perversions. While psychoanalysts don't turn a blind eye to patterns of abuse in everyday relationships, they don't rigorously define them.