The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child

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The Conflicts of Ambivalence

Anton O. Kris

To cite this article: Anton O. Kris (1984) The Conflicts of Ambivalence, The Psychoanalytic Study
of the Child, 39:1, 213-234, DOI: 10.1080/00797308.1984.11823427

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 The Conflicts of Ambivalence
ANTON O. KRIS, M.D .

. . . any satisfactory conception of obsessional neurosis

has to go beyond the aspect of intersystemic conflict
between id, ego, and superego and take into account
the intrasystemic contradictions within id such as they exist
between love-hate, passivity-activity, femininity-mas-
culinity.
-ANNA FREUD (l966b, p. 246)

IN HER ELOQUENT APPRECIATION OF HEINZ HARTMANN'S CON-

tributions to psychoanalytic ego psychology, Anna Freud re-
minded the audience that "Intrasystemic conflicts had of course
always been prominent in psychoanalytic theory" (1966a, p.
210). She referred to those potentially present in drive opposites
within the id and to those in the superego, among identifications
with figures of authority. Hartmann's contributions in this area
(1950, 1951) had emphasized conflict between the ego's several
functions and its implications for therapeutic technique. They
meshed well with Anna Freud's own observations and conclu-
sions regarding some contradictory consequences of the devel-
opment of ego functions:
As the ego of the child grows and improves its functioning,
better awareness of the internal and external world brings it into
contact with many unpleasurable and painful aspects; the in-
creasing dominance of the reality principle curtails wishful think-
ing; the improvement of memory leads to retaining not only plea-
surable but frightening and painful items; the synthetic function
prepares the ground for conflict between the inner agencies,

Training and supervising analyst, The Boston Psychoanalytic Institute.

21 3
 Anton O. Kris

etc. The resultant influx of unpleasure and anxiety is more than

the human being can bear without relief; consequently it is
warded off by the defense mechanisms which come into action
to protect the ego.
Thus, denial interferes with accuracy in the perception of the
outer world by excluding the unpleasurable. Repression does the
same for the inner world by withdrawing conscious cathexis
from unpleasurable items. Reaction formations replace the un-
pleasurable and unwelcome by the opposite. All three mechan-
isms interfere with memory, i.e., with its impartial functioning,
regardless of pleasure and unpleasure. Projection runs counter
to the synthetic function by eliminating anxiety-arousing ele-
ments from the image of the personality and attributing them to
the object world.
In short, while the forces of maturation and adaptation strive
toward the increasing, reality-governed efficiency in all ego
functioning, the defense against unpleasure works in the op-
posite direction and, in its turn, invalidates the ego functions
[1965, p. l04f.].
These important contributions and perspectives were essen-
tial to my understanding when I first took up the problem of
either-or dilemmas (1977) and emphasized the role of intra-
systemic conflicts. My present discussion approaches a closely
related problem from a different perspective. In this approach
the technique, the phenomena, and the concepts of clinical psy-
choanalysis are initially described in relatively operational terms.
Specifically, they are formulated in terms of the method of free
association (Kris, 1982) rather than in terms of the psycho-
analytic theory of the mind. My intention is to spell out as clearly
as I can the patterns of free association and their immediate
determinants that seem to me to be best described as conflicts of
ambivalence. I shall contrast them with their more familiar
counterpart, the conflicts of defense.
I shall begin by delineating the conflicts of ambivalence, em-
phasizing three chief distinguishing characteristics. A short his-
torical review follows, designed to illustrate the way these con-
flicts have been both recognized and ignored in psychoanalysis. I
proceed from there to a brief explanation of some terms I em-
ploy in formulation from the viewpoint of the method of free
 The Conflicts of Ambivalence

association. I then discuss the characteristics and the scope of the

concept of conflicts of ambivalence.
To forestall misunderstanding, I shall say at once that my term
conflicts of ambivalence covers a much wider territory than the
most common usage in psychoanalysis of the term ambivalence,
affection and hostility directed toward the same object. Others
(e.g., Lichtenberg and Slap, 1973, p. 780) favor such a widened
scope of ambivalence. It does not come near, however, to equat-
ing all conflict with ambivalence to which Holder (1975), among
others, rightly objects. The conflicts of ambivalence include a
variety of paired opposing components, which for purposes of
summary may be said to correspond to elements of all three
inner agencies, ego, superego, and id. My concept of conflicts of
ambivalence, however, refers to patterns of association and to
their immediate inferred determinants, not to elements of a
theory of the mind. The prime characteristic of conflicts of am-
bivalence is that their paired opposing components diverge.
They pull away from each other rather than push against each
other, as is the case in the conflicts of defense, where the oppos-
ing components converge. The two other characteristic features
of conflicts of ambivalence are: (1) reluctance to proceed with
free association because of the anticipated loss of the paired
opposing component; and (2) the requirement for a process akin
to mourning in their resolution.

HISTORICAL REVIEW

The first phase of Freud's psychoanalytic work established the

recognition of unconscious mental conflict in which one tenden-
cy defends against another, the conflicts of defense (1894, 1896).
Freud soon shifted to exclusive use of the term repression (1900)
rather than defense, reintroducing the term defense only much
later when he presented the signal theory of anxiety (1926). The
conception of the paradigm of mental conflict in which a re-
pressing force defends against the entry into consciousness of
the repressed was accompanied by the elaboration of the central
therapeutic paradigm of psychoanalysis: resolution of conflict through
the lifting of repression with the reacquisition of forgotten memo-
216 Anton O. Kris

ry, affect, desire, and a variety of functions lost to neurotic

disturbance.
Just as the conflicts of ambivalence share nothing of the drama
and focused intensity of the conflicts of defense, their psycho-
analytic history follows a course far less sharply delineated. Bi-
polarity of instincts was introduced as early as 1896 in the con-
cept of constitutional bisexuality (1950, p. 238), where one side
or the other was ordinarily to be repressed (1950, p. 251). By
1905 Freud's conception had developed significantly. In discuss-
ing the relationship of the neuroses and perversions, he ac-
corded an especially prominent part in the formation of neurot-
ic symptoms to "the component instincts, which emerge for the
most part as pairs of opposites" (p. 166). These pairs, "the
scopophilic instinct and exhibitionism and the active and passive
forms of the instinct for cruelty," are both in operation at the
same time. Love, he added, can be transformed into hate.
In 1908 Freud recognized that "Hysterical symptoms are the
expression on the one hand of a masculine unconscious sexual
phantasy, and on the other hand ofa feminine one" (p. 165). His
reasoning demonstrates the potential for a second paradigm of
conflict:
It remains true that a hysterical symptom must necessarily rep-
resent a compromise between a libidinal and a repressing im-
pulse; but it may also represent a union of two libidinal phan-
tasies of an opposite sexual character ... it is not hard to adduce
cases in which the impulses belonging to the opposite sexes have
found separate symptomatic expression [po 165].
[He concluded with a most important finding:] one may ob-
serve how the patient avails himself, during the analysis of the
one sexual meaning, of the convenient possibility of constantly
switching his associations, as though on to an adjoining track,
into the field of the contrary meaning [p, 166].
"Generally speaking, every human being oscillates all through
his life between heterosexual and homosexual feelings, and any
frustration or disappointment in the one direction is apt to drive
him over into the other," Freud wrote (1911, p. 46) in his com-
mentary on the upsurge in Schreber's homosexual wishes when
his wife was absent for a few days. The concept of "frustration"
 The Conflicts of Ambivalence

(1912b) and its relation to the concept of libidinal fixation which

were at that time central, however, drew his attention to the
problem of repression and to the return of the repressed rather
than to tension between two divergent opposites as a second
paradigm of conflict.
In the case histories of Little Hans (1909a) and the "Rat Man,"
Freud was occupied with "the chronic co-existence of love and
hatred, both directed towards the same person" (1909b, p. 239).
This condition, which, following Bleuler, he soon called am-
bivalence (1912a, p. 106), was linked to the sadistic-anal organi-
zation, with additional polarity due to active and passive sexual
aims (1905, p. 198f.; section inserted in 1915). In 1915 he added
that the "two pairs of opposite instincts: sadism-masochism and
scopophilia-exhibitionism ... are the best-known sexual in-
stincts that appear in an ambivalent manner" (1915, p. 132). He
also applied the term ambivalent to the antithetical meaning of
words (1913, p. 67; 1919b, p. 226), to activity and passivity (1915,
p. 131), and to "abolishing the object's separate existence" (1915,
p. 138) in the oral-incorporative developmental phase of loving.
(An uncharacteristic and confusing use of the term ambivalent
[1913, p. 29f.] to refer to prohibition against the unconscious
wish to masturbate, displaced to a conflict over touching in gen-
eral, seems to me to reflect a misplaced influence of the theory of
repression on the observation of a different kind of bipolarity.)
Freud attempted to deal with the problem of bipolarity by
examining the developmental effects on the instincts of "the three
great polarities that dominate mental life" (1915, p. 140): activity-
passivity, ego-external world, pleasure-unpleasure. But it did
not satisfy him for long. Ultimately he concluded that two in-
stincts, one aimed at life, love, and synthesis, the other at death,
destruction, and disorganization, were required to account for
some of the major polarities. "Our views have from the very first
been dualistic, and to-day they are even more definitely dualistic
than before-now that we describe the opposition as being, not
between ego instincts and sexual instincts but between life in-
stincts and death instincts" (1920, p. 53). His views on the in-
stinctual origin of conflict were elaborated and extended in
1937, when he said that "an independently-emerging tendency
218 Anton O. Kris

to conflict of this sort [between homosexual and heterosexual

trends] can scarcely be attributed to anything but the interven-
tion of an element of free aggressiveness" (p. 244).
In the conception of his structural point of view, Freud re-
tained and institutionalized several polarities and created the
potential for others. Among them was the point of departure for
Hartmann's (1950, 1951) concept of intrasystemic conflict, the
description of the potential for conflict between the ego's identi-
fications. Suggesting that their disruptive effect could lead to the
conditions for multiple personality, Freud (1923) concluded,
"Even when things do not go so far as this, there remains the
question of conflicts between the various identifications into
which the ego comes apart, conflicts which cannot after all be
described as entirely pathological" (p. 31). He had already de-
scribed conflict within the ego in connection with the war neu-
roses (1919a, p. 209), which now received a systemic conception
of the ego as a framework. Later (1927, 1933, 1940) he described
splitting in the ego as a defensive and as an adaptive process.
In this brief review of Freud's contributions to understanding
the intrasystemic conflicts and other bipolar influences, I have
taken for granted the reader's recognition that from his earliest
work (e.g., 1950, p. 260) Freud conceptualized the unconscious,
later the id, as tolerating such contradictions, i.e., as being inca-
pable of experiencing contradiction. As Anna Freud (1965) put
it, "Drive representatives and affects of opposite quality, such as
love and hate, active and passive, masculine and feminine
trends, exist peacefully side by side in the id while the ego is
immature. But they become incompatible with each other and
turn into sources of conflict as soon as the synthetic function of
the maturing ego is brought to bear on them" (p. 133). When I
spoke of intrasystemic conflicts composed of drive represen-
tatives (1977) I did not mean to imply that the conflict is experi-
enced in the id. The concept of conflicts of ambivalence in no way
trespasses upon that territory; in no way does it suggest conflict
within the id. I shall try to demonstrate, however, that it is not
necessary-and is, in fact, incorrect-to assume that the tension
between these pairs of opposites derives only from the repression
of one of them in the service of the other. That is, not conflicts of
 The Conflicts of Ambivalence 21 9

defense alone but conflicts of ambivalence in conjunction with

conflicts of defense account for the tension.
Freud's contributions to the formulation of a second para-
digm of conflict extend beyond the delineation of the elements
of conflict. His description of the process of mourning provides
an essential component for a second paradigm of conflict resolu-
tion, because a process akin to mourning bears the relationship
to the conflicts of ambivalence that remembering, through lift-
ing of repression, bears to the conflicts of defense.
To make my meaning clear it is necessary to distinguish be-
tween some of the many meanings that the word mourning ex-
presses in Freud's writings and in those of others. Mourning for
Freud may mean nothing more than the state or social condi-
tions following the death of a loved one (or some other irre-
trievable loss), or it may refer to this period of time. It may refer
to the sad and painful affects, alone, connected with such an
occurrence (1950, p. 200), or it may refer additionally to the
ambivalent and guilty feelings toward the person lost (1950, p.
255; 1913, 1917). Mourning also is used to refer to the sequence
of events in the psychological separation from the loved person,
that is, to the process of mourning, sometimes including a variety
of steps or phases (1917; Bowlby, 1961, 1980; Pollock, 1961,
1978). When I refer to a process akin to mourning, I have in
mind a narrow usage, including only one aspect of Freud's de-
scription, which he put in various ways. In "Mourning and Mel-
ancholia" (1917) he describes this part of the process in the
following terms: "Each single one of the memories and expecta-
tions in which the libido is bound to the object is brought up and
hypercathected and detachment of the libido is accomplished in
respect of it" (p. 245). In 1926, he concludes, "That this separa-
tion should be painful fits in with what we have just said, in view
of the high and unjustifiable cathexis oflonging which is concen-
trated on the object by the bereaved person during the re-
production of the situations in which he must undo the ties that
bind him to it" (p. 172). This process is initiated by "respect for
reality" whose "orders cannot be obeyed at once. They are car-
ried out bit by bit, at great expense of time and cathectic energy,
and in the meantime the existence of the lost object is psychically
220 Anton O. Kris

prolonged" (1917, p. 244f.). Jacobson (1971) has amplified this

conception of the mourning process in a description of the "vac-
illating attitude" in states of grief. "Apparently, the painful ex-
perience ofloss leads to an inner dichotomy. On the one hand,
the emotional pain-like physical pain-seems to regenerate
and mobilize libidinal forces, which, flooding back to memories
of the happy past, stir up those highly charged longings to regain
the lost gratifications. On the other hand, the highly vested
memory of the tragic event has become the carrier of sad antic-
ipations" (p. 82). The components essentialfor theprocess thatI refer to
as akin to mourning are alternation and painful detachment.
With his description of this aspect of the process of mourning
Freud once again came close, I believe, to formulating a second
paradigm of conflict and conflict resolution. In addition, he
placed the process of mourning in conjunction with two conflicts
of ambivalence: (1) the conflict between respect for reality and
the unwillingness to renounce the past (1917); and (2) am-
bivalence "proper," that is, love and hate toward the same object
(1950, p. 255; 1909a, 1909b, 1915, 1917). In the case of the
latter, however, the repression model of conflict was empha-
sized, so that the familiar intensification of one (the loving side),
with reaction formation, and the repression of the other were
regarded as the mechanisms by which love and hate for the same
person were managed, especially in obsessional neurosis, but
also in hysteria (1915, p. 49; 1926, p. 157f.). While instinctual
drive bipolarity did not soon find a bipolar formulation of con-
flict, the structural point of view, as already noted, set the stage
for Hartmann's (1950, 1951) conception of intrasystemic con-
flicts within the ego (and, later, superego). That formulation can
account for conflicts such as the one between respect for reality
and the reluctance to relinquish self and object permanence that
is characteristic of the state of mourning (Kris, 1982, p. 59f.).
To complete this historical review, I want to cite the work of
Alexander (1933), who put forward arguments in favor of re-
garding bipolar instinctual conflicts as different from conflicts
between ego and instinctual strivings. Anna Freud (1936) en-
dorsed this viewpoint in her discussion of the ego's need for
synthesis as a motive for defense (p. 60; see also 1965, p. 133,
cited above). Fenichel, however, for whom "neurotic conflict, by
 The Conflicts of Ambivalence 221

definition, is one between a tendency striving for discharge and

another tendency that tries to prevent this discharge" (1945, p.
129), opposed Alexander's views on the grounds that the bipolar
instinctual strivings can be formulated in "structural" terms
(1938). Unfortunately, the possibility for examining the dif-
ferences between the two kinds of conflict was lost in the service
of theoretical unification.
In the sphere of intrasystemic conflicts within the ego, Glover
(1932) introduced the valuable notion of ego nuclei with poten-
tial for conflict between them. A further application was pre-
sented by Sterba (1934), who described the "fate of the ego in
analytic therapy," a therapeutic dissociation of the ego, which
leads to assimilation of unconscious impulses.
I have already referred to Hartmann's introduction of the
concept of intrasystemic conflicts in the ego as distinct from
drive-defense conflicts (1950, 1951; Hartmann and Loewen-
stein, 1962; Loewenstein, 1965, 1972) and to Anna Freud's con-
tributions from a developmental perspective (1936, 1965).
Their contributions were extended in another direction by a
related concept introduced by Rangell (1963a): a distinction "be-
tween two different types and meanings of conflict. These are
(1) an opposition type, of forces battling against each other, in
hostile encounter, and (2) a dilemma type, the need for a choice
between competing alternatives" (1963b, p. 104). He has applied
the concept of the (divergent) dilemma type of conflict to "a
microdynamic sequence of intrapsychic events" (1971, p. 429) in
the study of the psychoanalytic process and the study of the
decision-making process.
I conclude this section by referring to Kernberg's (1976) em-
phasis on two developmentally distinct defensive operations,
splitting and repression (pp. 43-46), which playa central role in his
conception of object relations theory. I shall return, shortly, to
splitting as one end of the spectrum of either-or conflicts of
ambivalence.

FREE ASSOCIATION: SOME BASIC FORMULATIONS

The concept of conflicts of ambivalence grew out of my attempt

to formulate the clinical concepts of psychoanalysis in systematic
222 Anton O. Kris

fashion initially in terms of the method of free association

(1982), with an operational description of the method of free
association as its basis. Formulating the clinical concepts in this
way, rather than formulating them and the method of psycho-
analysis in terms of a theory of the mind, offered several advan-
tages. My hope was to provide a means that could help individual
analysts to develop and to study their use of theory and to pro-
mote further research into the use of theory. I have discussed
(l983b) the way in which this approach tends to preserve the
analyst'S conceptual freedom in the psychoanalytic situation.
This approach is, however, not a substitute for a comprehensive
psychoanalytic theory of the mind or of behavior in other con-
texts and only an initial means of formulation in the psycho-
analytic situation itself.
I described the method of free association as a joint venture, in
which the patient attempts to say in words whatever comes to
mind, without reservation, and the analyst attempts to assist the
patient in that task. The ways in which the analyst will do so will
naturally and necessarily include interpretation and the produc-
tion of insight, but the analyst's primary aim will be to assist the
patient in his task of attempting to say what comes to mind
without reservation, the activityof free association. The sequence
of thoughts, feelings, wishes, sensations, images, and memories
produced by this activity I refer to as free associations, and the
developing interaction when the method of free association is
employed by patient and analyst is the process of free association.
In all these terms the word free connotes only freedom from
conscious control. I use the term freedom of association to refer to
the relative absence of unconscious interference. I find it useful
to distinguish between unconscious interference with freedom
of association, for which I use the term resistance, and conscious
interference with free association, for which I use the term reluc-
tance. The determinants of free association, external and internal,
conscious and unconscious, are the inferred influences that seek
and sustain expression in free association and those that oppose
it. (I avoid the barbarous verb "to free associate" not only be-
cause it is grammatically unappealing but also because it has so
often been used ambiguously in psychoanalytic discussion to
 The Conflicts of Ambivalence 223

refer to freedom from both conscious and unconscious sources

of interference, with substantial loss of meaning.)
For purposes of discussion I use the formulation of the in-
ferred determinants of a pattern of free association as a designa-
tion of the pattern produced. When I speak of conflicts of de-
fense and conflicts of ambivalence as patterns of association,
these formulations actually refer to the inferred determinants, but
they are stated in terms so near to the observed that they retain a
descriptive quality for the corresponding patterns of association.
The formulation ofclinical concepts in terms of the method of
free association has an advantage beyond those I have indicated.
Like Anna Freud's concept of developmental lines (1965, 1981),
free association demonstrates the interaction of components of
the personality. Attention to patterns of free association facili-
tates recognition of varieties of such interactions in which the
same elements of separate aspects of the personality operate
quite differently. This approach is particularly favorable for
highlighting the relationship between the conflicts of defense
(convergent opposition) and conflicts of ambivalence (divergent
opposition).

AN OUTLINE OF THE CONCEPT OF CONFLICTS

OF AMBIVALENCE

Conflicts of ambivalence are distinguished from conflicts of de-

fense in terms of the divergence or convergence of the opposing
components and in terms of the kinds of opposites in each-
criticisms, retaliations, and punishments in the latter, antitheti-
cal pairs in the former. While antithetical pairs can also partici-
pate in conflicts of defense, in that case the relationship between
the reluctance to proceed with free association and the opposing
forces is quite different from that in conflicts of ambivalence. I
return to this matter shortly. In order to gain a fuller under-
standing of the difference between the two paradigms of con-
flict, however, it is necessary to grasp the natural rhythm and
affective accompaniment of each kind of conflict that becomes
apparent in the process of resolution in the psychoanalytic
situation.
224 Anton O. Kris

The picture of free association in conflicts of defense is so

familiar that I need barely refer to the mounting tension as the
repressed seeks to be heard. Redoubled resistances (unconscious
interferences with freedom of association) become the target of
the analyst's clarification and interpretation until they lead to
insight, most often accompanied by painful affect and then re-
lief. Frustration of unfulfilled wishes reliably spurs the process
forward toward the analytic goals of remembering the forgotten
and gaining freedom of action through insight. In general, the
increasing tension promotes the process of association in con-
flicts of defense.
The rhythm is altogether different in the conflicts of am-
bivalence where painful tension regularly develops as either side
is pursued without the other. This tension is often experienced
at first only as the reluctance to proceed with free association.
The patient may so readily anticipate it, however, that he or she
can make no commitment to the treatment situation or to the
method of free association. Under these circumstances one must
start wherever one can, recognizing that conflicts of ambivalence
may cast a paralyzing inertia not only upon the patient but upon
the treatment method. In such instances, patient and analyst,
like the driver of an automobile stuck in a snowdrift, must aim at
a rocking motion that eventually gathers enough momentum to
permit movement in one direction or the other. Such an out-
come depends upon the patient's capacity to tolerate a process
akin to mourning, in which the painful sense of loss of the other
side of the ambivalence is experienced over and over in a variety
of contexts, usually in both directions. In facilitating the detach-
ment of the divergent opposites from each other in the course of
the painful alternations, the process of free association in psy-
choanalysis operates like a gradually lengthening pendulum
that spends longer and longer periods on each side. In doing so
it probably parallels what normal development brings along
through the everyday analogues of free association (Lewin,
1955). Where these conflicts are enmeshed in neurotic construc-
tions and their resolution is hampered by inadequate develop-
ment of the capacities-such as those for tolerance of frustra-
tion, uncertainty, and ambiguity-the complicated process and
conditions of psychoanalytic treatment may be necessary.
 The Conflicts of Ambivalence 225

The close connection between remembering and insight and

the resolution of conflicts of defense finds no exact parallel in
the conflicts of ambivalence. Mourning is the aspect of memory
associated with them, while insight, in the usual sense, is con-
fined to gradual recognition of the conflict in those instances
where the patient has been unaware of it. Awareness of conflicts
of ambivalence, however, by no means guarantees their resolu-
tion, though repeated occasions of painful awareness in a pro-
cess akin to mourning is an essential component of their
resolution.
The requirement for a process akin to mourning may seem
more or less self-evident where, for instance, conflicts of am-
bivalence are concerned with the adolescent's steps from prima-
ry to secondary objects, from home to the world away from
home, from parents to lovers. That is, where a temporal aspect is
included, one element representing past, whether it be object,
attitude, or component instinct, and the other representing pre-
sent and future, the analogy to mourning for a lost loved one is
readily comprehensible. Where two equally current elements
are in divergent opposition, however, it is not so immediately
apparent that their free expression should require painful de-
tachment. This is an empirical matter. One explanatory model I
find useful is the formulation of mourning itself as the process
by which particular conflicts of ambivalence are resolved (1982,
p. 59f.). These include a conflict between the wish to hold on to
an illusion of the permanence of the people one loves and of
oneself, on the one side, and the need to preserve one's sense of
reality, on the other, and, a conflict between the wish to die with
the one who is dead and the wish to live on. In another view, the
detachment of opposing wishes, which leaves each one free to
gain expression, also leaves each painfully unprotected by the miti-
gating influence of the other.
For example, in the case of a patient who has been restricted
by conflicts between active and passive wishes, between
pregenital and genital sexuality, between primary and second-
ary objects-the rather common state of affairs when a young
man falls into a neurotic state of inertia and relinquishes all
ambition-when he regains some freedom of wish and action
through resolution of the conflicts, the consequences are soon
 Anton O. Kris

apt to be anxieties concerned with punishment, rejection, and

the sense of inadequacy due to conflicts of defense.
These considerations bring me to the interaction between con-
flicts of defense and conflicts of ambivalence. For example,
where there is a conflict between an old source of pleasure-an
activity, interest, attachment, or a wish-and a new one, the
patient is likely to level a criticism at himself: "You are too old for
that; you should give it up." Or, on the other side, perhaps, "You
are too bold with that; you should give it up." A conflict of
defense (between desire and self-criticism) has been linked with
the conflict of ambivalence. And, further, both of these self-
critical attitudes are apt to be externalized and attributed to the
analyst. An additional conflict of ambivalence then compounds
the original one. The patient's need and wish to maintain a good
relationship with his analyst appears to be in conflict with his
wish to express his associations. The latter is based not merely on
the patient's responsibility in the method of free association. It is
fueled by the tendency to gratify the source of pleasure on either
side of the original conflict of ambivalence.

RELUCTANCE IN THE Two KINDS OF CONFLICT

The clinical hallmark of the conflicts of ambivalence is the ex-

pectation of loss as a consequence of the activity (not of the
contents) of free association, with the development of (conscious)
reluctance to proceed with free association. While reluctance may
arise from resistance in conflicts of defense, there it is due to the
contents, that is, to the specific causes of un pleasure that would
be expressed but for the reluctance. In conflicts of ambivalence
the usually unconscious expectation ofloss of the other member
of the antithetical pair and the feeling of reluctance increase as
the associations express either of the two opposites alone. Free
association increases the tension between divergent opposites.
Where a conflict of defense leads to reluctance it does so from an
expectation of a punishment or retaliation, that is, a convergent
antithetical force which has been externalized, or from a fear of
being overwhelmed. Reluctance in conflicts of defense occurs
when the repressed member of the pair, the one from which con-
scious attention is withdrawn, attempts to enter the associations.
 The Conflicts of Ambivalence

In those conflicts of defense where one of two opposites serves

principally as a defense against the other, reluctance does not
appear when the associations express the one that remains free
to enter consciousness. Reluctance in conflicts of ambivalence,
on the other hand, occurs increasingly when attention is focused
on either one alone. (Reluctance may, of course, also occur in the
absence of unconscious conflict, for example, when a patient is
in love, or in crisis, or ill, but it always implies, at least, a conscious
conflict between the wish to continue free association and the
unwillingness to do so.)

THE RECOGNITION OF CONFLICTS OF AMBIVALENCE

The method of free association can be expected to lead to clarifi-

cation of the current determinants of free association. For such
an analytic investigation to be reliable, however, patient and
analyst must be open to the possibility of conflicts of ambiva-
lence, that is, conflicts between forces in divergent opposition.
The a priori imposition of the defense conflict paradigm in a
conflict between active and passive wishes, for example, so that
the active ones are regarded as a defense against the passive (or
vice versa), excludes the possibility that they are equally valid. It
prevents recognition of a conflict of ambivalence between them.
There is no way to avoid the complicating fact that the same
elements enter into both kinds of conflict and that it is more the
rule than the exception that conflicts of defense and conflicts of
ambivalence operate in combination. Nonetheless, at times ei-
ther kind may appear in relative isolation from the other for
long enough to make it possible to identify their characteristic
pattern of association. From these instances the more compli-
cated but more usual situation of interaction between conflicts of
defense and conflicts of ambivalence can be better understood.
A number of clinical situations contain special features that
make them particularly suited to the study of one or the other
aspect of human psychology. The link between hysteria and
repression was clearly the first in psychoanalysis, that between
obsessional neurosis and love-hate ambivalence, a second. For
the study of conflicts of ambivalence in general, adolescence
seems to me the field of choice. (The rapprochement phase of
228 Anton O. Kris

separation-individuation, especially the rapprochement crisis,is

another [Mahler, 1972; Mahler et al., 1975]. It requires other
means of study than the method of free association which is the
basis for my observations and formulations.) The striking prob-
lem that ambivalent wishes pose for adolescents accompanies
their characteristic, rapid oscillations of interest and orientation
between such familiar opposites as independence and depen-
dence, active and passive, primary and secondary objects, love
and hate, homosexual and heterosexual, pregenital and genital
sexuality, self-control and dissipation, ideal and crude, mind
and body, fantasy and reality. This is so important a psychologi-
cal feature of adolescence, that much of the analytic therapy of
adolescents can be conducted along the lines of a principle that
calls for reminding the adolescent of the other side of his am-
bivalence as he pursues his associations and as they take him,
inevitably, too far for comfort in one direction or the other. A
gentle nudge, now and again, may be sufficient to keep the
pendulum of free association traveling smoothly back and forth
in the less severe disorders.'
Another most important avenue of insight into the elements
of conflicts of ambivalence lies in the study of borderline pa-
tients, whose pathological intolerance of ambivalence requires
splitting of their experience, as both cause and consequence. For
example, in describing such a patient, with the diagnosis of a
borderline paranoid character, Kernberg (1976) reports the
rapid development of "specific, well structured alternation be-
tween opposite, complete irreconcilable affect states" (p. 23).
Sometimes, in the repair of such conditions the gradually in-
creasing tolerance of ambivalences provides a clear view of the
many functions involved in the normal development of the ca-
pacity to tolerate ambivalence.
Splitting is the extreme form of dealing with either-or dilem-
mas. The gradual resolution of the tension between divergent
opposites leads from splitting through the condition of relative
inseparability to the freedom of association in which either can
be expressed alone without the expectation of loss of the paired

1. In this paper I deal only incidentally with the technical implications of the
distinction between conflicts of defense and conflicts of ambivalence.
 The Conflicts of Ambivalence 229

opposite and the development of reluctance. Paradoxically,

again, this relative freedom of association is the prerequisite for
the satisfaction of experiencing both members of the opposing
pair at the same time. To complicate matters still further, howev-
er, there are instances of restricted freedom of association in
which opposites are represented together-in image, fantasy, or
symptom-without the sense of either-or, loss, or reluctance.
For example, conflicts of bisexuality may be dealt with as com-
posites in hermaphrodite images, or the opposing elements may
be presented very closely in succession to form a union. The test
of which sort of solution is represented, one that substitutes for
freedom of association, the other that derives from such free-
dom, lies in the ease of separability of the elements in free asso-
ciation. The distinction between these two kinds of solution
bears a close correlation, I believe, with the theoretical concepts
of obligatory condensation, in primary process, and synthesis, in
secondary process (1977).

THE SCOPE OF THE CONFLICTS OF AMBIVALENCE

In this section I briefly indicate a few areas in which the concept

of conflicts of ambivalence can be of explanatory value.

THE PSYCHOANALYTIC SITUATION

So long as all conflict is viewed according to the paradigm of

repression, with convergent opposition, the psychoanalytic sit-
uation is restricted, and the roles of its participants are sharply
limited. All reluctance is then necessarily interpreted as a man-
ifestation of defense operating as resistance, and the analyst's
efforts must attempt to overcome resistance through analysis of
defense, with the aim of lifting repression.
The concept of conflicts of ambivalence warns against such an
assumption regarding reluctance. It cautions that reluctance is
very often due to divergent conflict of antithetical pairs and that
the analyst'S efforts to promote expression of what he takes for
the repressed may very well run counter to the natural rhythm
by which the pendulum of free association swings from side to
side. Under these circumstances a real conflict between free
 Anton O. Kris

association and a good relationship with the analyst may lead to

unfortunate consequences, among them compliance rather than
alliance. This outcome can occur all too easily and silently, when
the patient's unconscious self-criticism is aroused by the reluc-
tance to proceed. A synergism between externalized self-crit-
icism and the analyst's pressure for lifting repression can also
lead to regression and hostility.
WORKING THROUGH

In general, the resolution of conflicts of one paradigm gives rise

to conflicts of the other. For example, when a patient's sexual
inhibition is analyzed, with recognition of unconscious conflict
(of defense) over incestuous wishes of childhood that operate in
the present, the new freedom of action is likely to create conflicts
of ambivalence with respect to separation from the patient's
parents. Correspondingly when a patient recognizes and mas-
ters a conflict of ambivalence between the old relationships at
home and potential new ones, with their sexual possibilities, new
sexual anxieties are apt to emerge, owing to conflicts of defense.
Much of the process of working through, the process that fol-
lows development of insight, can be accounted for in these
terms, rather than in the more mysterious concept of the repeti-
tion compulsion or "resistance of the unconscious" (Freud,
1926, p. 160).
THE OEDIPUS COMPLEX

Freud's formulations of ambivalence in the oedipus complex in

1913 and in 1926 bear a remarkable relationship to each other.
In Totem and Taboo he writes that ambivalence derives from the
oedipus complex (1913, p. 157). In Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anx-
iety he regards the oedipus complex as the result of ambivalence
(1926, p. IOlf.), the latter now deriving from the postulated
conflict between life and death instincts. These two views appear
to approach the problem of the oedipus complex from the per-
spective of the two paradigms of conflict. Both have merit.
NARCISSISTIC PHENOMENA

Elsewhere (1983a) I have presented a formulation of the deter-

minants of free association in narcissistic phenomena. I empha-
 The Conflicts of Ambivalence

sized the interaction of unresolved conflicts of ambivalence with

unconscious guilt (punitive unconscious self-criticism) over ex-
cessive demands. I outlined the advantages of this conflict-cen-
tered conceptual approach to the solution chosen by Kohut
(1977), which abandons the concept of conflict because he con-
ceived only of conflicts of defense. I believe that other the-
oretical controversies, for example, those introduced by the En-
glish school of object relations, might also be better understood
with a framework of two paradigms of conflict. Kernberg (1976)
has offered similar suggestions based upon the distinction be-
tween splitting and repression.
In this connection, I want to add that many (though certainly
not all) of the diagnostic questions that refer to the distinction
between developmental arrest and regression from a more ad-
vanced position find a clearer answer when two paradigms of
conflict are applied rather than one. That is, the conflicts be-
tween old forms ofloving and more advanced ones, between old
sources of sexual excitement and later ones, between old objects
and new ones appear in the process of free association as diver-
gent conflicts with the patterns of conflicts of ambivalence.
When such patterns go unnoticed or are actively interfered with
by imposition of the defense-conflict paradigm, an artificial di-
chotomy may result that appears to distinguish developmental
arrest from regression in some instances.

THE CONCEPTION OF CONFLICT VERY EARLY IN LIFE

It seems to me that the delineation of a second paradigm of

conflict might be of use to researchers of infancy, some of whom
seem inclined to abandon conflict formulations. These re-
searchers confront a conceptual error, the incorrect assumption
of convergent conflict between all antithetical pairs, if they at-
tempt to formulate their data in relation to psychoanalytic theo-
ry. For example, George Klein (1976), whose clear and powerful
conceptions remain an important influence in infancy research,
precedes an elegant discussion of intrasystemic conflict between
drives with the conclusion "that every conflict involves incom-
patible aims; on the one hand a persisting desire for gratification,
and on the other hand a countertendency which, for dynamic
 Anton O. Kris

reasons within the person, is incompatible with gratification" (p.

170).
It seems plausible that the recognition of conflicts of am-
bivalence, with special emphasis on their divergence, might per-
mit the formulation of their infantile precursors and the elab-
oration of their ontogeny.
SUMMARY

The concept of conflicts of ambivalence is presented as a second

paradigm of conflict, alongside the repression-defense para-
digm of conflict. Three features of conflicts of ambivalence dis-
tinguish them from conflicts of defense: (1) divergent opposites
(not limited to love and hate) rather than convergent ones; (2)
reluctance to proceed with free association because of the antici-
pated loss of the paired opposite; (3) the requirement for a
process akin to mourning in their resolution.
A historical review of Freud's contributions to concepts of
bipolarity and mourning is presented that demonstrates the im-
portance he attached to bipolar influences. The contributions of
Heinz Hartmann and Anna Freud are emphasized.
After the presentation of some basic formulations that place
the concept of conflicts of ambivalence in an operational frame-
work based on the method of free association, the characteristics
of the two paradigms of conflict are compared. The special im-
portance of conflicts of ambivalence in adolescence and the cor-
responding value of the study of adolescence for appreciating
the nature of the conflicts of ambivalence are noted. The distinc-
tion between the resolution of conflicts of defense through in-
creasing tension and lifting of repression and the resolution of
conflicts of ambivalence by pendular alternations in free associa-
tion, with a process akin to mourning, is stressed. The interac-
tion of the two kinds of conflict is described.
The scope of the conflicts of ambivalence, that is, their field of
explanatory value, is indicated by five areas of application.

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