Digesting Jung: Food for the Journey - Inner City Books

38 The Value of Conflict
Perhaps the most painful conflicts are those involving duty or a
choice between security and freedom. Such conflicts generate a
great deal of inner tension. As long as they are not conscious, the
tension manifests as physical symptoms, particularly in the stomach,
the back and the neck. Conscious conflict, on the other hand, is
experienced as moral or ethical tension.
I have worked analytically with married men and women who
had secret lovers and troubling physical ailments. By and large,
they did not come to me because of a conflict over their extramarital
activities, which were safely compartmentalized. In truth, they
were split and didn’t know it. But when their right hand (ego)
openly acknowledged what their left hand (shadow) was doing,
their physical symptoms disappeared. There then followed moral
tension and a conscious search for resolution.
Conflict is a hallmark of neurosis, but conflict is not invariably
neurotic. Life naturally involves the collision between conflicting
obligations and incompatible desires. Some degree of conflict is
even desirable, since without it the flow of life is sluggish. Conflict
only becomes neurotic when it settles in and interferes, physically
or mentally, with the way one functions.
Two preliminary possibilities exist for resolving a conflict. You
can tally up the pro’s and con’s on each side and reach a logically
satisfying decision, or you can opt for what you “really want,” then
proceed to do what is necessary to make it possible.
Many minor conflicts can be decided by reason. But serious conflicts
do not so easily disappear; in fact they often arise precisely
because of a one-sided rational attitude, and thus are more likely to
be prolonged than solved by reason alone.
Where this is so, it is appropriate to ask, “But what do I want?”
or alternatively, “What do I want?” These are useful questions, for
the first, with the accent on “I,” clarifies the individual ego position
(as opposed to what others might want), and the second, stressing
“want,” activates the feeling function (judgment, evaluation).
A serious conflict invariably involves a disparity between think-