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including the spheres relatively conflict free. In Arlow’s view, unconscious fantasy provides a mental set that organizes perception and cognitive functioning in general. As for the conceptualization of therapeutic action by contemporary Modern Conflict Theorists, Abend (2007) calls attention to unconscious sets of transferential attitudes corresponding to unconscious fantasies specifically revolving around the psychoanalytic setting and process. Gray’s (1994) ‘close process monitoring’ of the defensive functioning of the verbal flow of each session focuses on transference analysis revolving around concerns for the analyst’s possible judgmental reactions, within the Modern Conflict Theory paradigm. Follow up studies of completed psychoanalyses support the contemporary view that conflicts are never completely resolved. Even after analysis conflicts remain active and ready elements in an individual’s psyche. What changes is the individual’s ability to respond to the arousal of conflict in a more adaptive manner (Papiasvili, 1995; Abend, 1998). III. Bd. Object Relations Theory and Conflict within Structural Theory: Dorpat and Kernberg Theodore Dorpat (1976) proposed the term ‘Object Relations Conflict’ to describe a type of internal conflict that involved a psychic structure that is less differentiated and antecedent to id-ego-superego differentiation. Dorpat’s object relations conflict relates to an individual’s experiencing oppositon between his own wishes and his internalized representations of another person’s wishes. An example would be: “I want to do this, but it would hurt my mother.” Citing possible ego and/or superego deficits (Gedo and Goldberg, 1973), and a lower stage superego formation (Sandler, 1960), Dorpat stressed a need for a hierarchical model of the mind for an integrated understanding of psychic conflict. At a higher level of internal differentiation, it involves the tripartite model, and at a lower level, an object relations model, where the superego is not fully experienced as an internal agent, where the ‘separation guilt’ is generated by incomplete separation between the self and object, and the representational process is not fully internalized. Since Dorpat’s patient talked about the “mother in my head” and not about an actual interaction with his mother, the conflict could not be classified among the external or externalized conflicts. As object relations became a more central interest, there were other original efforts to integrate ego psychology and object relations theories with implications for the theory of technique. One such influential integration in North American psychoanalysis comes from Otto Kernberg. His synthesis developed gradually over the last 30 years, is applicable especially concerning pre-oedipal development and “wider scope,” borderline personality disorder pathologies, where unconscious intrapsychic conflicts are not simply conflicts between impulse and defense. In his writings, Kernberg (1983; 2015) elaborates on the Pre-oedipal conflicts as occurring between two opposing units or sets of all good - all bad internalized object relations. Each of these units consists of self and object representations under the impact of a drive derivative, which surfaces clinically as an affect disposition. Both impulse and defense find expressions through an affectively imbued internalized object relation.
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