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The Conflict Behind the Conflict is an important book written by a Chinese psychotherapist. It combines psychoanalytic theory with traditional Chinese cultural stories, myths, and local cases to interpret conflicts that exist in everyone's inner space. The book analyses the connotations, and thoroughly understands the tasks and possible difficulties of the oedipal period of human development. As a therapist still in training, I am also constantly exploring myself and understanding my inner conflicts in the process of studying psychoanalysis. This book reminds me of myself and the people around me, giving me a broad perspective to summarise and integrate these theories to understand the oedipal triangle in a cultural and social environment.
This book studies the oedipal triangle. When we talk about this topic, there is always the question: “Is this theory applicable for Chinese people? Is there an oedipal phenomenon in Chinese culture?” The author found the Chinese version of the Oedipus story from Chinese allusions, namely the story of Xue Dingshan and Xue Rengui. The author also uses clinical cases, well-known myths, and legends to explore the Chinese version of the oedipal conflict.
The Oedipus complex proposed by Freud is a symbolic metaphor that covers many complex relational conflicts in people's inner world, such as love and hate, good and bad, desire and temptation, security and persecution, aggression and retaliation, victory and guilt, intimacy and separation. The contradictory pairings of these inner experiences may all be projected in the triangular relationship between a child and the father and mother, so the symbolic content of the triangular relationship can be used to explore the complex emotional experience of the individual's inner space. And many dilemmas in life are often related to inner conflicts, the core of which is an unresolved Oedipus complex.
As the child enters the oedipal stage, he moves from a mother-child duality to a father-mother-child