Viewing Conflict Through a Reconsideration of the Application of Psychodynamic Sexual Theory in Transactional Analysis

Abstract

Freudian sexual theory can provide useful insight into the nature and roots of conflict, although the scientific basis of that theory became outdated and led to its disappearance, more or less, from the psychodynamic literature. This was already beginning when Berne was studying with Federn, and although sexual theory featured in Berne’s work, he paid little attention to its scientific validity and shifted his focus away from the sexual underpinnings of relationship and conflict. In his pioneering work on the scientific aspects of relationship and conflict, Berne emphasized structure hunger as their basis. In this article, by reworking the scientific aspects of Freudian sexual theory, the author looks again at Berne’s work in light of that theory and provides a means, perhaps, by which to enhance the understanding of how transactional analysts can work with conflict.