The conflicts of life are generally conscious conflicts, in my
experience. Desires and lusts that one does not know of do no
harm; it is the conflict which we cannot settle, the choice we
cannot make, the doubt we cannot resolve, that injures. It is not
those who find it easy to inhibit a desire or any impulse that
are troubled, though they may and do grow narrow. It is those
whose unlawful or discordant desires are not easily inhibited who
find themselves the theater of a constant struggle that breaks
them down. The uneasiness of a desire that arises from the
activity of the sex organs is not a manifestation of a
subconscious personality, unless we include in our personality
our livers, spleen and internal organs of all kinds. Such an
uneasiness may not be clearly understood by the individual merely
because the uneasiness is diffuse and not localized. But there is
no personality, Do will, wish or desire in that uneasiness; it
may and does cause to arise in the conscious personality wills
and wishes and desires against which there is rebellion and
because of which there is conflict.
Upon the issue of the conflicts within the personality hangs the
fate of the individual. Race-old lines of conduct are inhibited
by custom, tradition, teaching, conformity and the social
instinct and its allies. Here is a subject worthy of extended
consideration.
Freud has done the thought of our times a great service in
emphasizing conflict. From the earliest restriction laid by men
on his own conduct, wrestling with desire and temptation has been
the greatest of man's struggles. Internal warfare between
opposing purposes and desires may proceed to a disruption of the
personality, to failure and unhappiness, or else to a solidified
personality, efficient, single-minded and successful. Freud's
work has directed our attention to the thousand and one aberrant
desires that we will hardly acknowledge to ourselves, and he has
forced the professional worker in abnormal and normal mental life
to disregard his own prejudices, to strip away the camouflage
that we put over our motives and our struggles. Together with
Jung and Bleuler, he has helped our science of character a great
deal through no other method than by arousing it to action
against him. In order to fight him, our thought has been forced
to arm itself with the weapons that he has used.
CHAPTER VI. EMOTION, INSTINCT, INTELLIGENCE AND WILL
In a preceding chapter we discussed man as an organism reacting
against an outside world and spurred on by internal activities
and needs. We discussed stimulation, reflexes, inhibition, choice
and the organizing activity, memory and habit, consciousness and
subconsciousness, all of which are primary activities of the
organism. But these are mere theories of function, for the
activities we are interested in reside in more definite
reactions, of which the foregoing are parts.
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