Intrapersonal conflict — a condition in which a person has a contradictory and conflicting motives, values, and the purposes for which it currently can not handle, can not work out the priorities of behavior.
Study intrapersonal conflict began in the late XIX century and was associated primarily with the name of the founder of psychoanalysis — Sigmund Freud. He showed that human existence is due to the constant stress and overcoming the contradictions between biological instincts and desires (especially sexual), and socio-cultural norms between the unconscious and consciousness. In this contradiction and constant confrontation, according to Freud, the essence of interpersonal conflict.
Otherwise, consider the theory of intrapersonal representatives of the humanistic school of conflict. A fundamental component of the structure of personality, according to Carl Rogers, is «self-concept» — a representation of the person itself, the image of his own «I», which is formed during the interaction with the environment. On the basis of «self-concept» is self-regulation of human behavior.
But the «self-concept» is often not identical with the representation of the ideal of «I». Between them, the mismatch may occur. This dissonance between the «concept», on the one hand, and the ideal of «I» — on the other, and acts as an intrapersonal conflict, which can lead to severe mental illness.
Widely known for the concept of interpersonal conflict, one of the leading representatives of humanistic psychology, American psychologist Abraham Maslow. According to Maslow’s motivational personality structure forms a series of hierarchically organized needs:
1) physiological needs;
2) the need for security;
3) The need for love;
4) the need for respect;
5) need self-actualization.
The highest — need self-actualization, that is, in the implementation of human abilities and talents. It is expressed in that man tends to be what it can become. But he did not always succeed. Self-actualization as the ability to be present in most people, but only a minority of it is sold. This gap between the desire for self-actualization and the real result is the basis of interpersonal conflict.
Another very popular today intrapersonal conflict theory developed by Austrian psychologist and psychiatrist Viktor Frankl, who created a new direction in psychotherapy — logotherapy — search for the meaning of human existence. According to Frankl’s concept, the main driving force of every person’s life is his search for meaning in life and fight for it. But realize the meaning of life can only slightly. The absence of it creates a human condition, which he calls an existential vacuum, or a sense of aimlessness and emptiness.
Boredom — evidence of the lack of meaning in life, the semantic values, but this is serious. Because the meaning of life is much harder to find and more important than wealth. In addition, the need drives people to action and helps get rid of neuroses, and boredom associated with an existential vacuum, however, dooms him to inactivity and thereby contributes to the development of psychological disorders.
According to the theory of AN Leontiev, intrapersonal conflict — an inevitable part of the personality structure. Any man, even having a leading motive of conduct and the main goal in life, can not live only a single purpose or motive. Motivational sphere of human never frozen like a pyramid. So that conflict of particular interests and goals — quite normal for every person phenomenon.