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This term as it is usually employed in psychoanalysis and general psychiatry has many connotations. Here I shall restrict its meaning to conflicts that take place among the different psychic structures, id, ego, and the superego; the latter either as a final structure or in early childhood more frequently its precursors, long before the establishment of the final superego structure. The “neurotic conflicts” are simple units. They result from component instincts pushing for gratification and other aspects of the personality opposing such gratification, that is, forces in the form of internalized demands (representing the external prohibition). Neurotic conflicts can occur very early in the life of infants. We distinguish them from “neurosis proper,” which has a much more complex organization and as such appears only at a much later stage in the child's development. The neurosis proper can and usually does include several neurotic conflicts. We also distinguish neurotic conflicts from conflicts between the child's drives and the external world1 by the fact that the objection to the discharge or the gratification is in the case of the neurotic conflicts an internalized one.
Neurotic conflicts frequently are remnants of previous developmental conflicts. Typically, developmental conflicts are specific of certain phases or stages in development. Under