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= D.: Gegensatzpaar.–Es.: par antitético.–Fr.: couple d'opposés.–I.: coppia d'opposti.–P.: par antitético.
Term often used by Freud to designate great basic antitheses, either on the plane of psychological or psychopathological phenomena (e.g. *, voyeurism/exhibitionism) or else in the realm of metapsychology (e.g. */*).
In the Three Essays on the Theory of (1905d), Freud uses this term to point up a basic characteristic of certain perversions: ‘We find, then, that certain among the impulses to perversion occur regularly as pairs of opposites; and this […] has a high theoretical significance’ 1a. The study of sadism, for instance, shows up the presence, alongside the dominant sadistic tendencies, of a masochistic pleasure; similarly, voyeurism and exhibitionism are closely coupled together as the active and passive forms of the same *. Though especially visible in the perversions, such pairs of opposites are also regularly met with in the psycho-analysis of neuroses 1b.
Over and above its application to these clinical data, the idea of the pair of opposites is part of a permanent and essential element in Freud's thinking–namely, the basic dualism which provides the ultimate explanation of psychical conflict.
Whatever the form taken by this dualistic conception at the various stages in Freud's doctrine, one is constantly coming across such terms as ‘’, ‘opposition’ (Gegensätzlichkeit), ‘polarity’ (Polarität) 2, etc. The idea is not only used descriptively–it also appears at various levels of conceptualisation: in the three antitheses which define the successive libidinal positions of the subject, namely active/passive, phallic/castrated and masculine/feminine; in the pleasure-unpleasure opposition; and, at a more radical level, in the instinctual dualism (love/hunger, life instincts/death instincts).
Note that the terms paired off in this way invariably belong on the same plane but that neither can be reduced to the other; the one cannot engender the oth