In a nursing theory course the final assignment was: develop a concept relevant to nursing. Again I found myself struggling. The didactically stated importance of investing precious time and energy into constructing a synthetic conceptualization of a term eluded me. Time and energy spent to better understand man as he was known to me in the nursing situation seemed so limited. In these situations persons were expressing so many things at one time, how could the conceptualization of one term be relevant. Finally I understood: no one was saying that any one term could equate any particular or group of { 98} nursing situations. They were saying that to communicate the nature or experience of nursing with words, to develop nursing theory, relevant terms needed clarification as to the meaning they conveyed and delineation as to their inclusiveness and exclusiveness.
As this struggle subsided I could hear, "a term could be developed as a concept or synthetic construct if one conceptualized its why, what, how, when, and where and how these interrelated." In approaching concept development the last but not least hurdle was, what term did I consider relevant enough in nursing to expend this precious time and energy on considering the many possibilities. The first term I began to intellectually play with was "ambivalence." Now, I would attribute my selection of "ambivalence" to my then existing ambivalence about conceptualizing a synthetic construct. Then, I based its selection only on its existence in my clinical nursing world. I was working therapeutically on a regular, individual basis with an ambivalent adolescent male labeled diagnostically as a paranoid schizophrenic. I began to consider my clinically recorded data of my sessions with Bob through ambivalence. What were the relationships between why, how, what, when, and where Bob expressed ambivalence?
Struggling with the term "ambivalence" involved and interested me in concept development. During this phase I overcame my fear of exposing my thoughts, I took the risk, and my courage had the upper hand. Nevertheless, another choice had to be made since now I was not willing to invest this much time on conceptualizing "ambivalence" as so relevant to nursing. Perhaps this signified that my own ambivalence had dissipated. And again, I faced the question, what term would I want to develop as a synthetic construct?