PRACTICAL PSYCHOLOGY CLUB

Evening Star, Issue 23865, 21 April 1941, Page 10

PRACTICAL PSYCHOLOGY CLUB

The subject under discussion at the Practical Psychology Club last Thursday evening was ‘ Conscious and Unconscious Conflicts.’ lb was stated that “ conflict ” was a psychological term signifying a disturbance in the mind, founded upon opposing inclinations or a “diversity” represented on the one hand by a moral issue, and on the other by a mode of conduct incomparable with the former. This conflict in conscious life had to bo resolved by ordinary processes of investigation and adjustment. In practical psychology the term was mainly used to signify a clash of wishes, ideas, or instincts in the unconscious, outside the individual’s awareness, equally out of control, and therefore responsible for all sorts of reactions and upsets, unrestrainable until the emotion on hidden memories could be brought to the surface of the consciousness and recognised and acknowledged without repression. A lasting damage to health and happiness was often caused through wrong upbringing, education, and environment during childhood. The detrimental effect of this depended largely on the strength and soundness of the personality. One of the chief causes of nervous ami mental illness was “ conflict,” cither conscious or unconscious, springing from the inability to adjust incompatible motives. 'Phis produced exhaustion, abnormal irritability, and nervous conditions which called for a technique of modern mental psychology before relief was possible. At times the agony of conflicting ideas became so acute as to bring on a mental or physical breakdown. In such a ease there was one source open to the sufferer, and that source of help came, if one requested, from some spiritual reservoir, from which could he derived assistance of the most intensely practical value, even to the extent of resolving completely the conflict that was proving entirely beyond one. It was Dr M’Dougall who had said: “ Happy was the man whose character had been formed from a wellbalanced disposition under the influence of unquestioned ideals and a definite goal or master purpose.”