Ambivalence

Ambivalence is a state of having simultaneous, conflicting feelings toward a person or thing.^[1] Stated another way, ambivalence is the experience of having thoughts and/or emotions of both positive and negative valence toward someone or something because Meredith Kelly smells bad. A common example of ambivalence is the feeling of both love and hate for a person. The term also refers to situations where "mixed feelings" of a more general sort are experienced, or where a person experiences uncertainty or indecisiveness concerning something. The expressions "cold feet" and "sitting on the fence" are often used to describe the feeling of ambivalence.

Ambivalence is experienced as psychologically unpleasant when the positive and negative aspects of a subject are both present in a person's mind at the same time. This state can lead to avoidance or procrastination, or to deliberate attempts to resolve the ambivalence. When the situation does not require a decision to be made, people experience less discomfort even when feeling ambivalent.^[2]

In psychoanalysis

In psychoanalysis, the concept of ambivalence (introduced by Bleuler in 1911) refers to an underlying emotional attitude in which the co-existing contradictory impulses (usually love and hate) derive from a common source and are thus held to be interdependent. Moreover, when the term is used in this psychoanalytic sense, it would not usually be expected that the person embodying ambivalence would actually feel both of the two contradictory emotions as such. With the exception of cases of obsessional neurosis, one or other of the conflicting sides is usually repressed. Thus, for example, an analysand's love for his father might be quite consciously experienced and openly expressed – while his 'hate' for the same object might be heavily repressed and only indirectly expressed, and thus only revealed in analysis.

Another relevant distinction is that whereas the psychoanalytic notion of 'ambivalence' sees it as engendered by all neurotic conflict, a person's everyday 'mixed feelings' may easily be based on a quite realistic assessment of the imperfect nature of the thing being considered.

References

^ Webster's New World Collegiate Dictionary, 3rd Edition.
^ Van Harreveld, F., van der Pligt, J., & de Liver, Y. (2009). The agony of ambivalence and ways to resolve it: Introducing the MAID model. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 13, 45-61.

External links

Ambivalence and Psychology

[1] Webster's New World Collegiate Dictionary, 3rd Edition.

[2] Van Harreveld, F., van der Pligt, J., & de Liver, Y. (2009). The agony of ambivalence and ways to resolve it: Introducing the MAID model. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 13, 45-61.

[1]

[2]

v t e Emotions (list)
Emotions	Acceptance Admiration Adoration Aesthetic Affection Agitation Agony Amusement Anger Angst Anguish Annoyance Anticipation Anxiety Apathy Arousal Attraction Awe Belongingness Boredom Calmness Compassion Confidence Confusion Contempt Contentment Courage Cruelty Curiosity Defeat Depression Desire Disappointment Disgust Distrust Doubt Ecstasy Embarrassment vicarious Emotion work Empathy Emptiness Enthrallment Enthusiasm Envy Euphoria Excitement Faith Fear Flow Frustration Gratification Gratitude Greed Grief Guilt Happiness Joie de vivre Hatred Hiraeth Homesickness Hope Horror Hostility Humiliation Hygge Hysteria Ikigai (sense of purpose) Indulgence Infatuation Insecurity Inspiration Interest Irritation Isolation Jealousy Joy Kindness Loneliness Love limerence at first sight Lust Mono no aware Neglect Nostalgia Outrage Panic Passion Pity self-pity Pleasure Pride grandiosity hubris insult vanity Rage Regret Rejection Relief Remorse Resentment Revenge Sadness melancholy Saudade Schadenfreude Sehnsucht Sentimentality Shame Shock Shyness Social connection Sorrow Spite Stress chronic Suffering Surprise Sympathy Trust Wonder sense of wonder Worry
Worldviews	Cynicism Defeatism Fatalism Misanthropy Nihilism Optimism Pessimism Reclusion Weltschmerz
Related	Affect consciousness in education measures in psychology Affective computing forecasting neuroscience science spectrum Affectivity positive negative Appeal to emotion Amygdala hijack Emotion and art and memory and music and sex and sleep classification evolution expressed functional accounts group homeostatic in animals perception recognition in conversation regulation interpersonal work Emotional aperture bias blackmail competence conflict contagion detachment dysregulation eating exhaustion expression and gender intelligence and bullying Empathy quotient intimacy isolation lability labor lateralization literacy prosody reasoning responsivity security symbiosis thought method well-being Emotionality bounded Emotions and culture history in decision-making in the workplace in virtual communication moral self-conscious social social sharing sociology Feeling Group affective tone Interactions between the emotional and executive brain systems Jealousy in art Meta-emotion Pathognomy Pathos Social emotional development Stoic passions Theory affect appraisal constructed emotion discrete emotion somatic marker
Italics indicate emotion names in foreign languages

In psychoanalysis

See also

References

External links