Emotional conflict

Examples of basic emotions

Emotional conflict occurs when a person experiences two (or more) opposing emotions/feelings at the same time, and those opposing feelings are pulling them in different directions.

Carl Jung indicated that "emotional conflicts and the intervention of the unconscious are the classical features of...medical psychology". The child psychoanalyst Eric Erickson indicated that emotional conflict was a source of neurosis in children.

Emotional conflict happens when:

• A person wishes to do something, but another part of the person doesn’t want to do it.

• A person feels both positive and negative emotions about the same person or situation.

• A person has two or more different values, desires, or needs inside themselves that are incompatible.

Emotional conflict can create stress, indecision, hesitation, and/or even physical tension.

Journal articles

• Affect, emotional conflict, and deficit: an overview, Psychother Psychosom. 1991;56(3):116-22. doi: 10.1159/000288543.

• Emotional conflict in interpersonal interactions, NeuroImage. Volume 54, Issue 2, 15 January 2011, Pages 1685-1691

See also

• Emotional stability
• Neuroticism

External links

• A Guide To Conflicting Feelings: Dealing With Mixed Emotions

• Emotional regulation during moments of conflict

• Emotional reactions leading to conflict, University of Toledo

• Intense Emotional Conflict as a Dysfunctional State

• Consequences of Emotional Conflict in the Workplace

• The Emotional Conflict Behind 50 Mental-Health Symptoms

Plutchik’s Wheel of Emotions