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The structural differentiation of the mental apparatus is only one of the factors that lead to psychic conflict. Older, in respect of development, and more elementary is the factor known as the polarity of instinctual processes. The structural relations of the mental apparatus, as they appear in dreams and symptoms, have been the object of more study and are better understood than the more fundamental fact that instinctual processes are manifested in pairs of opposites, such as the pair, active-passive, or expulsive-receptive, or masculine-feminine, or sadistic-masochistic, or exhibitionistic-voyeur. This polarity is considered generally as if it were a fundamental scientific fact, an irreducible phenomenon for which there is no chance of causal explanation. Empirically, in psychology, we must simply accept this polarity and preserve the hope that biology will some day provide us with its explanation. The opposed polar strivings, despite their apparent intimate mutual relationship, furnish an ever-present possibility of psychic conflict.
The study of mental phenomena from a structural, dynamic and economic point of view is by no means incompatible with the qualitative study of the instinctual forces that participate in our metapsychological equations; rather, the two points of view supplement each other. The validity and utility of both modes of approach is evident, for example, in our formulation of the compulsion neurosis: the symptoms can be understood and described as the expression of a dynamic equilibrium between repressed and repressing forces; but they can be described and understood equally well as sadistic and masochistic reactions, or in many cases as the expressions of the patient's bisexual strivings. Up to now we have usually preferred to use separately either the more formal metapsychological, or the qualitative point of view; and