Ambivalence Of The Self: The Determinant Of Deteriorating Married Relationships

Abstract

Ambivalence is  a type of psychological imbalance in every human mind that causes deterioration of married relationships in fictional as well as in our real life. The term ambivalence is originally a psychological term, taken from the German word Ambivalenz, propounded in 1910 by the Swiss psychologist Eugen Bleuler. The term Self-ambivalence was first used by Guidano and Liotti in 1983 to introduce a concept which elaborates that an individual may not have the stable and concrete sense of himself.  Literally, ambivalence is a condition of uncertainty having synchronous clashing responses, convictions, or sentiments towards a few articles. In this research, ambivalence represents a multidimensional model of cognitive, affective, behavioural and social conflicts found in inter-personal relationships. It is human tendency to split their experience into polarities, such as good/bad or right/wrong and emotions such as affection/antipathy, happiness/sorrow etc. This paper investigates the principle factors responsible for ambivalent attitude causing a married relationship breakdown from the psychoanalytical perspective of Abraham Maslow and Scott Barry Kaufman. It can be said that people usually deal with the opposites of their experience even in the state of unconsciousness. Each partner will develop behaviours around this conflict trying to pull their partner closer, or push them away. Each partner is communicating a specific role in the contention over being in the relationship or out of it, however basically the two partners are making the ambivalent strain between them by being identified with one end of the polarity.  

This paper also highlights on finding the ways to move beyond the ambivalence so as to develop friendly relationships husband and wife for a longer time. This research concludes that ambivalent psychology of an individual that makes him/her to get separated from his/her life partner.