Abstract
Clinical psychology has developed into many theories enhancing different parts or dynamics of the psyche. The common link is that these theories are all dealing with intrapsychic conflict (IPC). Yet in psychotherapy, patients may have multiple levels of conflicts which do not all refer to the same structure. Analyzing patients in the limits of one theory may be a hindrance to the patient’s development.
Festinger’s Theory of Cognitive Dissonance appears as a means to concentrate on the conflict itself, when it is actual, rather than only on the personality, or personalities, within an individual. It allows the exploration, not only of multiple levels within the personality, but of the multiple levels included in a conflict, such as relational, psycho-sociological, cultural, intellectual, philosophical, spiritual, relative to survival, emotions, interactions, drives, and thus addresses conflicts that arise from daily life.
Keywords: cognitive dissonance, intrapsychic conflict, psychotherapy, neurosis.
Decades have passed since practitioners and theorists such as Sigmund Freud, Alfred Adler, Carl Jung, Melanie Klein, Anna Freud, Karen Horney, and William Fairbairn were fighting over the correct theory of neurosis and the structure of the mind, and yet we practitioners of psychology are still split into different schools of thought. Patients have to go to one therapist for Oedipus complex, then to another one for a childhood trauma of separation, then again another one for an inferiority complex, as they feel that the therapist can only hear the part that seems relevant. We may understand that the pioneers were trying to—and thought they did—find the unique, central and universal explanation to human mental suffering, but they could not investigate enough to find out if their theory was universal. Is that acceptable today?
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