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The concept of conflict, especially unconscious conflict, is, of course, central to psychoanalysis. Conflict in the psychoanalytic situation is the source of psychoanalytic psychopathology, the psychoanalytic theory of the therapeutic process, and the psychoanalytic theory of individual development in the family and society. It is obvious that psychoanalysis could not exist as a theory or a therapy without constant reference to conflict.
Psychoanalytic theorizing about conflict has always adhered basically to Freud's metapsychological model and the language rules it dictates. We speak, for example, of dynamic conflict between drives and defenses, thereby agreeing to use a language organized around such terms as energy, force, and mechanism. We speak, too, of structural conflict between the ego and the id and between the ego and the superego, thereby agreeing to use a certain kind of structural language as well. The proposition will be developed here that it is both possible and desirable to develop a nonmetapsychological conceptualization of conflict that is still psychoanalytic and systematic. Conflict will be defined as a person's engaging in paradoxical actions. As will be explained later, action is to be understood in a broader sense than the usual one.